K.B. Jensen

K.B. Jensen is an award-winning author, with two novels, Painting With Fire, an artistic murder mystery, and A Storm of Stories, which veers literary and handles love, craziness and impossibility. K.B. lives in Littleton with her family and rescue mutt. She enjoys skiing and writing poetry. A former crime reporter and journalist, K.B. shifted to the publishing world in 2014, and is a senior publishing consultant and youth writing camp director for My Word Publishing. Her new collection of short stories, Love and Other Monsters in the Dark, will be published summer 2022.

Twitter: @KB_Jensen

Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?

I can’t choose one. I lived in Chicago for twelve years, and the paintings there are like old friends at the Art Institute of Chicago. I have an odd connection to Van Gogh and one of the paintings there, “The Poet’s Garden,” inspired a story in Love and Other Monsters in the Dark. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite though. Van Gogh’s work makes me feel—discord, sadness, beauty.

There are also paintings in Denmark that I love, little hidden gems like Anna Ancher’s art at the Ancher Hus museum in Skaagen, Denmark. It’s this tiny, little museum but the light in the pictures just streams in so beautifully. It’s a reprieve.

I live with a painting of my grandmother from the sixties that’s got really broad brushstrokes and bold colors, hanging in my parlor. She was a lawyer and a character. Her eyes follow you and her expression makes you wonder if she’s mildly judging you or simply amused. It’s just so her, and I love that one too.

Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing? Do you sew? Paint? Draw? Knit? Dance?

I downhill ski and teach skiing. I consider it a very zen version of dancing with gravity and snow. It is an art for me. I moved to Colorado about six years ago and I feel like the mountains are a place of meditation. I’ve been in ski school since I was eight. I try to be creative in my lessons, as well, tailoring them to my students’ interests. And I love the people. Maybe it’s an odd answer, but it’s the best artistic outlet I’ve got outside of writing these days.

Do you collect anything? If so, what, why, and for how long?

I collect books, especially signed ones. My to-read pile is threatening to crush me. I keep buying new bookshelves and then filling them. I have a lot of author friends, and work with authors too in my day job as a book midwife. So many books. I’ve been collecting them all my life.

Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?

I speak Danish. I’d say I’m close to fluent but more conversational and a little rusty. Every now and then I’ll be missing a word and I just dance around it, finding another way to say the same thing, which is a different way of thinking. I learned Danish as an adult. My dad is from Denmark but did not teach me Danish, so I learned it in college. Denmark and Danish culture has definitely influenced my writing. There’s a story in my second book, A Storm of Stories, called “The Danish Sun” where the characters are trying to choose between two countries.

What period of history do you wish you knew more about?

Denmark during World War II. My grandfather was in the Danish Resistance and I recorded him talking about his memories of the war in Danish over the phone when I was out of college. I’ve spent a lot of time in modern Denmark, but it’s different now. Writing about it is daunting.

My grandfather wasn’t at the center of the action. He knew how to blow up a train, but he never got the chance. He transported grenades in the basket of his bicycle and locked eyes with a German soldier on the road, but he wasn’t stopped.

Others around him weren’t as lucky. His best friend was shot and killed the last day of the war and they never found out who did it or even why.

The stories about his cousin, Carl. I wish I knew more about Carl and who he was as a person. I know he worked with the British, and was more active in the Resistance than my grandfather. I know he was also gay, something I can’t imagine would have been easy in Nazi-occupied Denmark.

The day before Carl was set to be executed for his role in the Resistance, his mother, Anna, begged the Reich commissioner for Denmark not to kill him. He assured her Carl would be spared.

The firing squad killed Carl the next day.

I have an old painting of Mount Vesuvius my grandfather gave me that used to belong to Anna. Another odd piece of art I’m deeply connected to. I imagine Carl growing up with that painting in his home, looking at it from time to time, and I wish I knew what he thought about it, the billowing smoke from a distant volcano.