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ARYA FRANCESCA JENKINS (1953-) was born FRANCESCA JEANNE JENKINS in Bogota, Colombia. She is a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, a peace and social justice activist,a teacher, writer, photographer, artist and editor. She currently lives in northern New Jersey, with her partner Donna Brennan.

EARLY LIFE FRANCESCA lived in Colombia and Peru until the age of eight, at which time she moved with her family to the United States, moving to New Canaan, Connecticut in 1964. She is the first of five children born to John and Lyll Jenkins. Her father John was born in Iowa, and her mother, Lyll Becerra de Jenkins, was a Colombian-born writer. FRANCESCA attended School of the Holy Child from 1967-1971, and then attended Rosemont College, in Bryn Mawr, PA, from 1971 to 1973. After a hiatus of four years, during which she lived in areas around the East coast, including Provincetown, Massachusetts, she attended Norwalk Community College, graduating summa cum laude in 1982. She then attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, on a full scholarship, graduating in 1984. Since 1994, when she began studying Buddhism, she has also been known as ARYA and ARYA-FRANCESCA.

ACTIVISM ARYA has been an activist for peace and social justice issues, and a supporter of the cause of Tibet for many years. Between 2002 and 2005, several of her commentaries for peace aired on NPR through radio station WYSU in Youngstown, Ohio, where she was involved with rallies and vigils against the war in Iraq. In 2006, she helped launch the FORT LEE PEACE VIGIL in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The FORT LEE PEACE VIGIL, which stands against war and supports the swift return home of U.S. troops continues to meet every Thursday from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the corner of Lemoine Avenue and Bruce Reynolds Boulevard in Fort Lee. Since 2006, ARYA has organized events supporting the cause of peace in the Bergen County area, hosting a panel at The Fort Lee Public Library that featured a representative from The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to discuss conditions in war-torn nations overseas and what organizations like AFSC are doing to help. She has helped to organize walks for peace, and for the cause of Burma, and organized a gathering with walkers for the cause of Burma with Rabbi Berger and the local community at The New Synagogue of Fort Lee in 2007. ARYA was also featured in a Bergen County Green Party forum on "Honduras Coup D'etat & the U.S." held on January 13, 2010 at The Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County in Teaneck, NJ. ARYA has also been a featured speaker at the International Day of Peace event, in Leonia, NJ, since 2009. Together with Paul Eisenman, Chairman of Bergen County Green Party, she arranged the first meeting of ONTY in November 2011 at The Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, in Teaneck, NJ. OCCUPY BERGEN COUNTY meets regularly and organized its first demonstration in front of Bank of America in Hackensack, New Jersey, in April, 2012. Members of OCCUPY BERGEN COUNTY have participated in marches and demonstrations with sister groups in New York City and elsewhere.

As a literary and photo journalist ARYA has covered many local and national peace and social justice events, in Bergen County and Washington, D.C. publishing articles and photos of marches for peace and rallies for presidential candidates Barack Obama, and (then) Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain during the 2008 national elections in local venues such as The Fort Lee Suburbanite and its affiliates, and also The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education and The Post. She currently blogs on the subject of the OCCUPY Movement in Patch.com.

TEACHING CAREER FRANCESCA taught creative writing for the School of Continuing Education at Fairfield University in Fairfield, CT, from 1989 to 1995. She also taught fiction writing at Mahoning County Career and Technical Center, from 2003 to 2006, working with a handful of students beyond the scope of the semester, helping them to publish their stories. Under her direction, her adult student writers, put together an anthology of their stories, under the collective title of the Wednesday Night Writers Group. Some of her students, such as Anthony Marchionda (WRITER'S CRAMP, 2006), went on to publish their stories independently. FRANCESCA has taught English, ESL, and writing at Norwalk Community College (CT), Sacred Heart University (CT), Fairfield University (CT), Ithaca College (NY) and Cornell University (NY).

PHOTOGRAPHY FRANCESCA has published her photos alongside her articles since the late 1970s, in the Fairfield County Advocate and its affiliates, and and magazines such as Berkshire Magazine, Fairfield County Magazine,and later in publications through North Jersey Media Group and The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education magazine, for which she worked. In 2005, ARYA won the President's Award for a photo titled, "You Can Do It" that hung in the university gallery for a year. Her photos and collages were subsequently included in shows in several galleries and museums in Ohio and Pennsylvania, such as the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts in New Castle, PA, and the Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio.

WRITING AND EDITING In 1994, FRANCESCA changed her name to ARYA AHAM. As ARYA and ARYA-FRANCESCA, she has published articles, translations, poetry, short stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in many literary journals and magazines. In 2011, a section of a memoir, "Broken Dreams in a Promised Land," was published in the Spring online edition of Solstice Literary Magazine, and an essay about the experience of writing that memoir in the spring online issue of Mandala Journal. ARYA'S essays and poems on the Occupy Movement have appeared on various websites on the Internet, including her own, www.writersnreaders.blogspot.com, and were also anthologized in THE (UN)OCCUPY MOVEMENT: AUTONOMY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS, HUMAN EQUALITY, compiled and edited by Mankh (Walter Harris III)and published by Allbook Books (2012). Her poems, photography and essays appeared in NO WAR NO MORE, a collection of poems, essays and artwork for peace that she also edited and was published by Greenwood/Blue Lotus Press (Ohio, 2007). In 2011, a chapbook of poems, JEWEL FIRE, A Collection of Buddhist Poems by ARYA F. JENKINS, was published by Allbook Books. It features a cover design by Diana Ludwig, an artist from McDonald, Ohio, with whom ARYA has collaborated on other artistic and literary projects. In 2012, a short story, "The Man from Walrite," was included in River Poets Journal Special Edition -- 2012 The Hopeless Romantic.

ARYA has edited and translated several works, including a story by her mother, Lyll Becerra de Jenkins, titled, "The Grandparents," which was published by The Seattle Review in the 1980s. ARYA translated (from Spanish) a children's book, DREAMS, FLORA & MAGIC by Mary Ely Pena (Cayena Publications, 2009). She has also edited books for the Fort Lee Film Commission based in Fort Lee, NJ. Her poetry has been published in several literary journals and newspapers.

As FRANCESCA BRETON, using her maternal grandmother's last name, Arya published several poems in the 1990s: "My Mother's Walk," and "The Long Silence" were published in Bookpress, a literary journal in Ithaca, NY, in 1996. Three of her jazz poems appear in Vol. 7, Winter 1996 issue of The Cafe Review.

ARYA helped to transcribe teachings by her spiritual friend, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo for a book, REFLECTIONS ON A MOUNTAIN LAKE, published by Bloomsbury Press, that made the USA TODAY list of top 10 spiritual books. In 1996 and 1997, ARYA also organized Tibetan Buddhist teachings and tours for Tenzin Palmo, the founder of the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in India, and for Geshe Wandak, who is now the teacher in residence at the Chenrezig Center in Middletown, CT.

Among ARYA's main influences and inspirations are Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, His Holiness the IV Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

ARYA is a director of The Fort Lee Historical Society, and also on the Board of The Fort Lee Coalition of the Arts.

She resides in Fort Lee, NJ.