71. Layers of Landscape with Jenna Brack
"Like seeing the sky, writing allows you to breathe. You ascend the stairs leading to your own thoughts and words the way water runs downstream, always searching for the larger substance from which you came." In Jenna Brack's Pass-Through Place, she explores landscape, home, and the invitations available to us wherever we're planted. Jenna grew up in Kansas, but this expansive conversation encourages you to consider your own relationship to place.
Highlights
The ache of belonging to two places at once
Defining home through a shifting lens of time and experience
How distance reveals what we couldn't see up close, and what announces itself only after we've left
Grief as a doorway to understanding ourselves and our writing more deeply
Home as emotional and spiritual territory, not just physical location
Writing Kansas with nuance rather than cliché
The value of learning to wait and let our work settle while working within our limits and capacity
Journaling prompts inspired by Pass-Through Place
Links & Mentions
Pass-Through Place by Jenna Brack
Wisdom from a Wheat Farmer (Substack)
Exhale Creativity writing community for mothers and artists
Wyatt Townley, former poet laureate of Kansas
Meet Jenna
Jenna Brack is the author of Pass-Through Place (Meadowlark Press, 2026), a collection of essays shaped by growing up in central Kansas. Her essays and poetry have been featured in Every Day Poems, Coffee + Crumbs, Fathom, The Sunlight Press, and others. A former educator and college instructor, Jenna now encourages other writers through editing and coaching. She holds an MA in English from Kansas State University and currently lives with her family in Germany.
Connect
✨ Seasonal shifts offer a gentle invitation to pause, pay attention, and make space for what comes next. THRESHOLDS is the guided reflection ritual I've returned to for years, now gathered into a workbook I'd love to share with you. Download your copy here.
