Jan Donley

Professor

Affiliated Departments

Liberal Arts and Sciences

jdonley@berklee.edu

Jan Donley's website

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Courses Taught (1)

Literature

LENG-223

Career Highlights

Playwright, fiction writer, and artist
Novel The Side Door published in 2010
Play It's Just the Wind featured in 2007 Boston Theater Marathon and Give the Dog a Bone at Beckmann Theatre in 2006
Paintings include "Train Study" (PAAM, 2018)
Publications include A Certain Light, an illustrated novel manuscript, Emerald City Literary Agency (2017); House, Hopewell Publications (2015); Dirt and Sky, three short fictions in Platte Valley Review's Forces of Nature issue (2012); and The Side Door, Spinsters Ink Press (2010)
Essays published in Cognoscenti include "The Art of Losing" (2024), "Snags" (2025), and "Daylighting Rivers: Unburying Myself" (2025)
Short stories appear in literary journals 34th Parallel and Silk Road, and in the anthology Stories from Where We Live
Gallery shows include Reflections in Time and Place: Jan Donley and Chris Roddick (2018), and Two-Person Exhibition: Jan Donley and Barney Leavitt (2017), both at Stewart Clifford Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts
Studies with Sam Smiley and Dennis Reardon, and Vera Roberts and Marvin Carlson at Indiana University; Germaine Greer, Lillian Robinson, Winston Weathers, and Shari Benstock at University of Tulsa; and Edward Abbey, Pamela Stewart, and Peter Wild at University of Arizona

Awards

Painting "Train Study" was chosen for You Should Be an Artist at Michael Ingbar Gallery, New York (2018)
Novel The Side Door (2010) won Best in General Fiction from the Golden Crown Literary Society (GOLDIE) and was chosen by the American Library Association to be on their Rainbow List
Painting "Orange Brothers at Night Window" was in the top 100 in the Mobile Digital Art and Creativity Summit (2016), and painting "Watching Rothko" was in the top 200 in the Mobile Digital Art and Creativity Summit (2015)
Arts videos won seven Telly Awards, among them are "The Worry Goes Deep" for Silver Telly Winner (2025), "Consider the Birds" for Bronze Telly Winner (2025), "Time Travel" for Silver Telly Winner (2023), and "Crossing Over" for People's Telly Gold (2022)

In Their Own Words

I hope that students learn from my classes:
1. The deep connection between literature and music
2. The power of literature to transform us
3. The power of literature to heal us
4. The power of their own creativity

My professional background contributes to my teaching as I am a writer and a visual artist. My creative process informs my teaching as I:
1. Connect with my students’ own creativity
2. Explore how the process—the slow discovery of ideas, the labor involved in that discovery, the problem-solving involved in that discovery, and the joy of sharing what has grown from that discovery—is a form of critical thinking that makes our hearts and our brains stronger. It makes us better able to navigate the world.