About Us

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Jeff Cowart is an award-winning journalist, editor, fiction writer and writing coach. He has served as executive editor, managing editor, city editor, and as a political and investigative reporter for newspapers in Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina. He is a former director of the American Press Institute where he developed and led immersive educational seminars for newspaper journalists

His writing and organizational leadership workshop credits include organizations such as The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Tribune Company, Gannett, Scripps Howard, HGTV and many others.

He is a former deputy chief of staff and press secretary for Louisiana Governor Charles E. “Buddy” Roemer and a veteran advisor to candidate and issues campaigns. For nearly two decades he has worked with corporate clients developing and implementing strategies related to public perception and positioning, message and brand, marketing and business development, issues management and crisis communications.

In 2016, he founded and continues to lead the Trinity Writers Workshop, a regular convening of creative writers based in San Antonio, Texas. He studied creative writing at Louisiana State University during the time that his mentors, Warren Eyster and David Madden, led the program there. He works creatively primarily in short fiction and has several of his stories published in anthologies of Louisiana writers. As a journalist and non-fiction writer, he's been published in numerous magazines and newspapers.

Miss Janet L. Hughes is a technical writer who delightfully stumbled into the world of creative writing. She produces social media content for a private religious organization in San Antonio, Texas. For two years, she served as Coordinator for the Trinity Writers Workshop supporting her fellow writers and writing coach with all manner of administrative and organizational tasks.

Personal essay, poetry, script and screenwriting for videos, interviews and articles, copyediting, social media posts, and experimental fiction are various ways she's been expressing her developing gifts for storytelling.

She first discovered her love for wordcraft through the backdoor in technical writing. Nearly 15 years of her career was lived out at USAA in San Antonio with the last 10 years devoted to the training department as a corporate instructor and course designer/developer. She’s happy to report she took to technical writing like a duck to water and later added grant writing to her portfolio. 

She earned her bachelor’s degree in Consumer Economics and Environmental Design, with an emphasis in Family Financial Planning, from Texas Tech University. While this may seem far afield from creative storytelling, she finds that her meandering path has been worth the journey. She plans to make her next stops along the way as a published author and writer of her creative narratives. 

There is no formal process for becoming a fellow, other than writing a heartfelt and compelling story on why you would like to be one.