ABOUT TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

To the Lighthouse aims to support all facets of your literary life. We offer professional book group facilitation; book signings, in-conversations, and panels with authors; and retreats for both writers and readers. Established in 2020, we’re building a community to support and encourage each other’s love of literature. Join us!

The “lighthouse” in our name is inspired by a real place, the Point Pinos Lighthouse in Pacific Grove, California, which stands sentinel over the Monterey Bay.

Our name is also aspirational. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s classic To the Lighthouse, the name evokes the creative longing felt by artists and dreamers everywhere.

Our beautiful logos were designed by designed by Irene Hoffman.

JENNIFER CARSON, FOUNDER

I have facilitated lively, elevated book group discussions of contemporary literary fiction with readers in the Los Angeles area since 2018. In 2020, I launched the literary organization To the Lighthouse to formalize and expand my services.

My criticism has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Science, and I’m a member of the National Book Critics Circle. My essays have appeared in Six Hens Journal and Barnes & Noble Review. My short fiction won an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train magazine, and a recent essay was a finalist for the Masters Review New Voices contest. (You can read selections of my work here.) I was also the Writer in Residence at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods in August of 2015 and at Hypatia-in-the-Woods in 2022. I am currently represented by Stephanie Cabot at Susanna Lea Associates.

I was first trained in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where I received two yearlong scholarships and two award nominations. I also honed my skills at the Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop, an Iowa Writers’ Workshop Summer Intensive, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the international Leopardi Writing Conference, and the Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop. I’ve received several awards and nominations, and in June of 2019, I earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing and Literature from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. I am represented by Stephanie Cabot at Susanna Lea Associates.

In 2001, I sat my first 10-day silent retreat with Goenka, which began my Buddhist meditation practice in the Theravada tradition. Since then, I’ve sat ~250 days of silent retreats of a week or longer, including one- and two-month retreats. In 2006, I completed the two-year Dedicated Practitioners Program of study and practice at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. I am forever in debt to my many teachers, especially Jack Kornfield, Trudy Goodman, Gil Fronsdal, and Ajaan Geoff. I led meditation and dharma classes and sitting groups in the LA area for a decade.

Before I was an artist, I was a scientist. I received a BS in physics from MIT and a PhD in astrophysics from UCLA, and I conducted post-doctoral research in gamma-ray astrophysics at Stanford. I currently teach college physics in Santa Monica, California.