A Many Faceted Writer Working in A Many Faceted City by Kirby Knowlton

“I’m trying to be the person who writes in the scraps of time,” says Jenny Maxwell, a multi-talented, multi-tasker extraordinaire. Just this week she is prepping skirt!, a women’s magazine, for its December issue, drafting a newsletter about energy concerns, writing a script for a public service announcement about Columbia’s Woodrow Wilson House, and planning for her next public speaking seminar. So, scraps of time is all Maxwell really has, and she sure is making the best of them.

With a solid background in creative writing, Maxwell puts her skills to work on a wide variety of projects, many of them happening all at once. “I put everything I’m working on onto a board,” she says. “I need to make all of my projects visual.” Currently the editor of skirt!, Maxwell’s first job was at WIS-TV. The job brought her to Columbia, a place she thought she would stay only a few years, writing and producing for the news while earning her master’s degree in English at the University of South Carolina. There she studied under poet and novelist James Dickey, who advised her to find a mindless job, such as bagging groceries, and write poetry full-time. “He made me see that I could write poetry,” she says. “something I never thought I could do…but now, looking back, I’m glad I didn’t take that route.”

Maxwell’s career, while still based in writing for television, took a slightly different direction when she found the opportunity to work on the popular Food Network show hosted by Alton Brown, Good Eats. “I was a freelance writer and I’d always loved to cook and eat, so it was great to do something I was interested in,” she says. “It was similar to writing sketch comedy.” Since then, Maxwell has continued to freelance in food writing, contributing to many magazines. She has also fused her interest in food and interest in television writing to help chefs and restaurant owners improve their on-camera presence.

But Maxwell’s favorite thing she does, and what unfortunately she has the least amount of time for, remains her own writing. “Alton Brown sort of taught me how to get things done with very little time,” she says. “He’d open his laptop and begin writing something when he had a spare thirty minutes…the goal is to have accomplished something everyday.” The types of writing she does, like the types of work she does, falls across a wide spectrum, from taking playwriting classes at Trustus theatre, to a children’s story called “Porcupine Saves the Dance” that has an original chamber music concert that goes with it, composed by Dick Goodwin and Ayala Asherov.

Though Maxwell didn’t think she would spend much time in Columbia, it has become her home. “I have all the perks of living and working in a city like New York or San Francisco right here,” she says. “I know so many writers and filmmakers here.” Whether it’s performing a children’s story at EdVenture and the Columbia Museum of Art, maintaining a local readership of skirt!, or working with Wade Sellers on WWII documentaries for ETV, Maxwell feels lucky to live in a city that allows her to experience all the diverse work she does.

Her favorite restaurant in Columbia is Terra and if she had to recommend a book to a total stranger, it’d be David Copperfield because she loves Betsey Trotwood.