Jocelyn Winn believes in kismet — fate, destiny, inevitability.
She was meant to be a writer, that much is certain. Her words adorn the walls of The Writing Gallery, newly opened in downtown Concord.
Winn’s November exhibit, aptly titled “Kismet” after the same force of the universe Winn embraces, combined photography with short-form essays hanging side-by-side.
“There’s a phrase that I love, which is what you are seeking is also seeking you,” she said.
A freelance editor and nonfiction writer, Winn has built a life out of her love of words.
After moving to Concord from Dover in 2013, she founded The Eleventh Letter, a freelance business providing writing and editorial services. She works with people on their manuscripts and also serves as a writing coach.
The office she initially rented on Park Street overlooked Main Street, where she watched businesses move in and out over several years. It had been her long-held dream to open a brick-and-mortar space. Earlier this year, Winn, an avid practitioner of manifestation, sent a request to the universe: a Main Street storefront that would become hers.
One day over the summer, mere months after her “shot in the dark” manifestation, a vacancy popped up next to Buba Kitchen.
“I always knew it would be called The Writing Gallery,” said Winn, who signed a lease in August and officially opened her doors in mid-October.
The gallery, which hosts visual exhibitions, writing workshops and other events such as bookmaking classes and songwriting sessions, bridges the gap between writing and art, especially for people like Winn, who doesn’t subscribe to any distinction between the two.
“I feel like we’re all artists,” she said. “And so this is sort of a play on that also. So everything here is art, but it has to have a written word component, or in the future, it could be spoken word.”
She wanted to foster a communal place to build on the creative momentum she’s been seeing around her, from the author series at the Capitol Center for the Arts to literary events at Gibson’s Bookstore and the New Hampshire Book Festival, where Winn has moderated panels.
“I was finding pockets of writers, but we sort of hide in the shadows,” she said.
After joining a local group called Shut Up And Write, Winn realized that bringing writers together felt more vital than ever, not just for her own creativity but for solidarity when creativity feels hard.
“Community is really important for me and for this gallery,” she said. “Not everyone will self-define as an artist or writer, but I want them to know that they are creative and that the arts, specifically writing, is a great way to express yourself and sift through things.”
Winn, a Massachusetts native, recalls writing Garfield stories in third grade, keeping her notebook and pen close throughout her childhood. It was never a question that words were her calling. But writing hadn’t felt like a career option when she started out.
Following graduation from Emerson College, where Winn studied speech/communications, she began forging a career in the publishing and editing spheres, working for a textbook publisher, an art magazine, the American Meteorological Society and an educational publishing firm.
The connections she made in her various workplaces fed into her freelancing as she moved from the Boston area to Dover and then, ultimately, to Concord.
At age 42, she returned to school to pursue a Master’s in Fine Arts in Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
“I really started earnestly calling myself a writer, unabashedly, like not secret anymore,” said Winn, whose work has appeared in literary magazines such as “Eratio” and “The Waterwheel Review.” She also serves as the nonfiction editor at “The Maine Review” and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Winn feels her path has taken her exactly where it’s meant to. And she, in turn, has embraced that journey and all its twists along the way.
When she was 22, the number 11 began following her, appearing on clocks, license plates and street signs wherever she looked.
“I find it a nod from the universe to say that, ‘Either pay attention to what’s going on, it’s important, or you’re at the right time, or you’re at the wrong time,'” she said.
“K” for “kismet” is the eleventh letter of the alphabet, so when it came time to name her business, she combined multiple elements of her world. These threads appear in her writing as well, with different components of her first exhibition, “Kismet,” named “Coincidence,” “Serendipity,” “Synchronicity,” “Magic,” “Wonder,” “Manifest,” “Chance,” “Energy,” “Intuition,” “Uncanny” and, of course, “Kismet.”
A self-described “observationist,” Winn derives inspiration from the world around her.
“Just in my daily life, I really like taking the ordinary and elevating it to universal meaning through metaphor, or just that idea that we all are connected, we all have the same type of ideas or experiences,” Winn said. “I am super motivated by science and numbers, I think, because I don’t understand it.”
Genre, to Winn, does not have to be limiting. She gravitates towards nonfiction but dabbles in fiction and, on occasion, poetry. She writes essays and short stories that draw from her musings about the world around her — a house she once walked past, her favorite number (it’s 11!) or the scientific evidence on the impact of prayer. Recently, she’d been channeling her energy into a manuscript whose essay components oscillate between fiction and nonfiction.
As her exhibit demonstrates, she finds that one form of creative expression fuels another. Writing will always be her primary art, but photography and painting provide an outlet that makes crafting stories through words feel more organic.
She intends to rotate exhibits on a monthly basis and spotlight a broad array of local creatives. The “Artist in Residence” room, designed for longer-term exhibitions, currently displays the work of Laci Mosier, an artist, poet and creative director based in Brooklyn. Mossier’s exhibit, entitled “A Slice of the Nice Life,” brings to life erasure poetry through colorful modern collages.
As the gallery takes off, Winn hopes it will become “a hub of writers,” with author readings and a whole host of literary events geared toward all levels.
“My dream is that this would be a staple of the Concord community for a long time, and then from there, I would love to run writing retreats,” she said. “I would love to have a small press. I would love to have a literary magazine — those types of things, all in the service of what people want.”
Learn more about Winn, her work and The Writing Gallery at theeleventhletter.com.