Jan Haag

Jan Haag leads writing workshops using the Amherst Writers & Artists method in Sacramento. She began writing as soon as she could hold a pencil, her mother says, eventually completing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and English at California State University, Sacramento.

Jan worked as a reporter and copy editor for newspapers and an international wire service, before serving as editor of Sacramento magazine in the early 1990s. She has recently retired as the chair of the journalism department, where for three decades she advised student publications from the campus newspaper and journalistic magazine to the literary journal, Susurrus, which she co-founded.

During her career as a creative writing professor, she created a college creative writing class using the AWA method, “Writing as a Healing Art.” Over 15 years hundreds of students found a safe, encouraging place to put their voices on the page.

Jan is the author of a book of poems about her late husband, Companion Spirit, published by Amherst Writers & Artists Press, has written two novels as well as a history of Sacramento City College, and has had her poetry and prose published in many journals and anthologies. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming AWA anthology “Black Poets Speak.”