Our Mission

We help students of all ages and stages love learning and get better at it for life.

We help writers shape their stories through generative workshops, coaching, editing, and publishing support.

We help organizations keep their people thinking and living creatively with artistic activities.

Our Publishing Vision

The publishing arm of Counterbalance Creative exists to

• Counter: the intentional and unintentional drowning out of the true, good, and beautiful by political whitewashing, content generation, and AI slop

• Balance: publishing industry models based on follower counts, market forces, or amplifying voices to the degree they can afford to make themselves heard

• Create: physical artifacts of ephemeral arts, engaging records of endangered histories, interdisciplinary dialogues, and an archive of oddities and essays, poems and stories for staying human

Indie publishing is about bringing creatives together to make books we think will contribute to the world in some unique way. We are not looking for the next big thing. We are looking for the next small but lovely and necessary thing within our power to realize.

Our Lead Creative

Jenn Cavanaugh brings over 30 years of teaching, writing, and editing experience to Counterbalance Creative. She delights in helping others deepen their knowledge and express themselves well.

In addition to publishing others' work, her own poems, stories, and reviews have appeared in multiple journals and anthologies. An inveterate traveler and perennial expat, she speaks five languages and has picked up tremendously useful smatterings of several others while making her way around the world.

Jenn also spends a lot of time singing.

We want to make the visions that have captured our imaginations available to others in the real world. Our pragmatic financial model is based on case-by-case project planning, working cooperatively to forge a budget based on a realistic scope for each publication that will allow writers, artists, and the publisher to avoid unnecessary financial risk and do our creative work in the world in a sustainable fashion.