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JOCELYN
SEARS

I am a researcher, writer, editor, and educator with over a decade of experience in media and academia. I am passionate about how storytelling—from the factual to the fictional—shapes our views of the world. 

I worked for five years as a researcher for iHeartMedia's podcast division, compiling research reports, fact-checking scripts, interviewing guests, and collaborating on narrative strategy for nonfiction series. Before that, I spent two years as staff researcher for the magazine Mental Floss

I received my PhD in English from Harvard University in 2025 and an AM in 2020. My dissertation, "The Future as Warning," analyzes narrative voice and literary form in 20th- and 21st-century Anglophone dystopian novels. My scholarship combines narrative theory with historical analysis to examine novels in the context of their cultural and political moments, while also tracking ideological and formal shifts in the dystopian genre.

 

Before coming to Harvard, I completed an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Virginia, where I held a Poe-Faulkner Fellowship. I graduated from Stanford University with a BA with honors in English and a minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

My editorial background includes stints editing a literary magazine and an academic journal, and I perform proofreading and copyediting services for clients. 

I am also a poet and have published poems in a range of print and web journals.

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