Jen Waters - Whimsy for Two (2016)

Jen Waters began playing the piano in her parents' Hershey, Pennsylvania, home in the second grade. In the fourth grade, she saw her first musical, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats. Although she enjoyed learning classical pieces on the piano, sometimes she would write her own songs instead of practicing her assigned lesson. Thus began her love of writing lyrics and melodies. She wrote her first song in the seventh grade and hasn't stopped since.

During the summer of 1994, Jen attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass. In 1999, she graduated as an S.I. Newhouse Scholar from the School of Public Communications at Syracuse University with a major in magazine journalism and minors in music industry and in English and textual studies. She took the TV, radio, and film classes in sound production. She also took classes at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University. During her junior year, she studied abroad for a semester in London, England. Upon graduation, Dean Rosanna Grassi awarded her with the Henry J. Wolff Prize for the graduating senior deemed most proficient in journalism.

She has worked for such Pennsylvania publications as Harrisburg Magazine, The Patriot News, and The Times Leader. She also worked for seven years in the Washington, D.C., media, writing mostly human-interest stories.

"Yellow Roses," a song Jen co-wrote, became the grand-prize winner in the country category of the 2005 Session-I John Lennon Songwriting Contest. She has performed at various places such as the ASCAP Writer's Showcase at the Kennedy Center with host Stephen Schwartz, Genghis Cohen, Hallenbeck's, Hotel Cafe, the Koffeehouse Sundance Film Festival Chateau, and the Durango Songwriters Expos. Since 2010, music-industry veteran Judy Stakee has mentored her.

In August 2014, Jen released a 33-song collection through Pen Jen Songs called Whimsy. She also released ten spoken-word poems that she wrote and performed in a collection called Wonderland. In April and May 2016, she re-released the Whimsy songs as Whimsy for One and Whimsy for Two, each with an original Christmas song. Her blog Pen Jen's Inkwell features her latest children's short stories and poems.