Jennifer Schelter

Jennifer Schelter is a writer and interdisciplinary artist. Her work originates in the body’s sensitivity, and in paying attention to nature and the tiny things that make life personal — which is to say, universal. Working across memoir, performance, and watercolor, she has built a creative practice that integrates contemplation, exacting detail, and the intimacy found in vulnerability and storytelling.

She offers workshops in mindful contemplation, meditation, writing life stories, and yoga locally and online, as well as at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton, Morris Arboretum, and Maine Media Workshops & College. She holds space for students to reflect, move, and write, using craft skills and story structure to shape their own authentic thinking and life stories. Her work is therapeutic and cathartic, supporting students in valuing their own voices and lives as art.

Schelter has written and produced four one-woman shows, including Love Lessons from Abu Ghraib, produced by Amnesty International and Interact Theater. She shared in a Tony Award at the Denver Center Theater Company in 1998. Her watercolors have been exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Woodmere Art Museum. She founded the curriculum for Philadelphia’s largest civic yoga fundraiser for breast cancer awareness and convenes the annual Radiant Retreat in Mexico — a gathering for personal discovery, joy, and beauty in nature. She is the recipient of the Living Beyond Breast Cancer Community Award for Taking It Off the Mat, has been named Best of Philly mindfulness instructor multiple times, and has been published in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. She recently completed her first memoir, Some Beauty, with a reading and performance featured by Radio Live Arts.

She lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia with her beloved cats and tiny garden.

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A list of the books stacked beside my couch:

Asian art, Buddhism, memoirs, poetry, meditation, spirituality, craft books on writing, the creative process, visual art, watercolor sketchbooks, cats, birds, and the life of flowers.