Jenn Howd’s Bio
After graduating with honors from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Jenn began their career in NYC as a Publicist at MGM/United Artists, where they worked on marketing campaigns for numerous blockbuster and Academy Award-winning feature films, such as Leaving Las Vegas, Pedro Almodovar’s Live Flesh, Get Shorty, The Bird Cage, as well as James Bond installments: GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, among many others. They later segued into post producing, where they oversaw motion graphics and VFX for major cable network image campaigns, feature documentary films, promos, and commercials. Clients included: ABC, NBC, HBO, Showtime, Google, ESPN, VH-1, AMC, Conde Nast Media Group, Focus Features, Discovery Health, Time Warner, and The NFL Network.
Having spent over a decade in this work, Jenn decided to turn their attention inward, developing a strong mindfulness meditation practice. Through their practice, they realized they no longer wanted to work within the corporate culture and decided to turn their heart and attention toward pursuing creative practices (something they had enjoyed while growing up but lost touch with along the way). So, in 2013, they took their last corporate job and dove headfirst into artistic life.
As a writer and filmmaker, Jenn has co-penned award-winning spec teleplays and screenplays. Their collaborative experimental short film, An Ounce of Mother, was an official selection in the 13th annual Boston Underground Film Festival and won “Best Film Shot on a Mobile Device” in the world’s first film festival held entirely on an iPhone app (The Flaneur Film Festival). A 2019 Cindependent Film Festival “Development Grant” awardee, Jenn’s experimental short documentary, 45 1/2 made its World Premiere at the Cindependent Film Festival in August 2019, where it was nominated for Best Short Documentary film. Their musical short video, “Rage Against the Teen,” features a fed-up mom’s punk rock fantasy and will be debuting in 2023. They also recently finished editing, creating the sound effects and musical score for short film, Waves, directed by Jessica Graham, which will be touring the film festival circuit in late 2023/2024.
Jenn’s musical satire short film, Texas Annie: The Legend of the Moan Ranger made its World Premier at the Dances with Films festival in Hollywood June 15, 2018 and has since toured North America at festivals such as: The Female Eye Film Festival, Cinekink, Women Texas Film Festival, Cindependent Film Festival, Clexacon, and the Speed Art Museum, among others. The feature screenplay version of Texas Annie, co-written with Roz Mihalko, won Grand Prize in the International Screenplay Association’s 2021 “Genre Busting Comedy” Screenplay Competition and was nominated for Best Feature Screenplay at the 2019 Cindependent Film Festival. The stage musical version of the material debuted at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival in Cincinnati, OH in June 2022 and won the “Pick of the Fringe Audience Award as well as a Critic’s Pick encore performance.” Content with a social cause, Texas Annie, will hopefully be touring through red states in 2024.
For the stage, Jenn also wrote, produced, scored (and starred in) the semi-autobiographical solo show, “Devon’s Diary,” which debuted at The Hollywood Fringe Festival in June 2015. They later adapted the show into a 6-part audio fiction series, under alter ego, “punkmouse.”
During Ohio’s COVID-19 stay-at-home order in 2020, Jenn took a deep dive into making experimental and ambient sound/music. Their work can be found on AEMC Records, as well as on their Bandcamp page and Instagram account. Their commissioned work for Mindful Music Moments involving field recordings from the Cincinnati Zoo debuted in the winter 2021/2022. Their “Neighborhood Songlines” community-based sound art SonicMap, also commission by Mindful Music Moments, will debut in 2023. Jenn’s GPS-based immersive audio soundscape map (“Plas Bodfa Continuum SonicMap”) debuted in April 2022 for public exhibit at Welsh manor, Plas Bodfa. Jenn is currently finishing up their first solo EP, featuring field samples collected when they were with their father in NH during his passing.
Jenn is aiming to dive deeper into artist residency experiences in 2024. They completed Real More Real‘s 44-hour sound art residency, “Campbient,” in 2021, where they camped in Washington state with 21 other participants for 44 hours to produced two, 22-minute live ambient sound recordings, and they were asked to return to Campbeint in 2022 & 2023, where they participated as a producer/counselor.
In addition to their work within the audio, video and entertainment world, Jenn is the co-author of The Gay & Lesbian Guide to College Life, and their debut memoir, Sit, Walk, Don’t Talk: How I Survived a Silent Meditation Retreat, published by the late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s publishing company Parallax Press, was featured on NPR’s Weekend Addition.
As a UCLA-certified mindfulness facilitator, Jenn facilitates mindfulness workshops and classes and has written about the subject for The Huffington Post and Elephant Journal, among others. They are the co-creator of the “Eastside Mindfulness Collective,” a collective of like-hearted individuals dedicated to exploring secular spirituality through mindful living and learning, and they also serve as a mindfulness-based developmental editor/coach for writers and artists seeking feedback and project guidance from concept to completion.
Dedicated to LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, Jenn co-created and produced the world’s first “Queer Media & Entertainment Conference” (Q-Me Con) in both NYC (2006) and Los Angeles (2007), as well as a special Q-Me Con “Women’s Summit” in NYC (2008)—all of which were committed to promoting queer visibility within the media & entertainment arenas. A proud voice in the queer community, they’re honored to have been included in GO! Magazine’s 2008 & 2014 “100 Women We Love” lists. Jenn currently serves on the board of queer-led, co-ed burlesque, drag, and performance art troupe, Smoke & Queers and co-produced “The Drag Fusion Project,” providing live theatre and film resources to drag performers, which debuted at the Carnegie Theatre in Covington, KY in November 2021.
View Jenn’s complete professional CV on LinkedIn.
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