👩🏻‍💻 About tanjennts

All about the newsletter and what to expect from it

👩🏻‍💻 About tanjennts

tanjennts is the creative outlet of writer & photographer Jenn Chen

About Jenn
I’m a writer & photographer in the specialty coffee industry and beyond. This is a job I created for myself and I love it most of the time (who actually loves their job 100% of the time? I’d love to know). Much of my writing is informed by my personal
tanjennts by Jenn ChenJenn Chen

Links: Paid plans | Favorite pieces | Testimonials

As a newsletter powered by chips and inspired by coffee, you can expect the unexpected. I'm told that I need a special one-liner and a niche for people to subscribe to this, but to be quite honest, I don't do well with advice meant for the masses.

But if you need one, here's the one-liner:

Exploring the tangents that coffee creates: essays and stories in culture, freelancing, food, and more.

tanjennts is not [only] about coffee. Coffee is the catalyst and thread that underpins the stories I explore. I don't like being pigeonholed, so I've purposefully made tanjennts to be all-encompassing of my interests, whether in words, photos, or both. But if you are interested only in coffee, this is not the newsletter for you.

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Be warned: This is a personal newsletter. I get into cultural identity, mental health, politics, the -isms, and more. I'll sometimes drop a well-placed f-bomb.

Even more about tanjennts

The general tanjennts homepage is a compilation of articles in all the sections, plus any that didn't fit within the categories.

  • In Focus: Conversations and interviews with creatives in or adjacent to the coffee industry.
  • Photo Essays: Photography essays that are sometimes accompanied by words. 🔏 For now, it's paid subscribers only, but this one about new year dumplings is unlocked for everyone to read.
  • In 2024, I tried out seasons with Season 1: Community & Season 2: New directions

Free & paid plans — "Why should I pay?"

Paid members sustain the work that goes into my free newsletter. It is just me—I'm the creative director, writer, editor, admin, pseudo-graphic designer, and everything else. Creative work takes time, energy, and mind space. If you have the monetary means to do so and you’ve benefitted from my work, please consider the paid plan.

If you cannot afford a subscription and/or you’re a student and would benefit from my paid articles, fill out this form for a one-year comp. I also accept tips and "name your price" annual subscriptions.

Free: 2x a month, sent midweek

  • Notes from Jenn: Life notes, only for email subscribers
  • The tanjennt: An essay or feature, including articles, personal reflections, interviews, and short-form journalism. In 2025, this section will feature one longform article and one essay a month. Both will always be free. Everything after this section is for logged-in subscribers (free or paid).
  • Recommendations & updates: Interesting articles, a tech/app rec, source requests, published works, and something joyful.
  • Plant update: A plant feature from my container garden!
  • Subscribing also gives you commenting privileges on the free articles.

Paid: 2x a month, sent midweek on the other weeks

$5/month or $50/year
sliding scale: $3/month or $30/year

Everything in the free plan plus two additional posts a month (at least four total per month). Each is a singular piece, such as:

Multiple payment methods are offered via Stripe, including international ones.

As someone who has been humbly enjoying your paid version as a comp subscription, I just wanted to say that seeing the two versions side by side each month has just been really lovely. They're so continuous and equal in value to each other. It's a powerful demonstration of equity in creativity, actually. That yes, you can do both – you can serve lower income folks who adore your work, AND you can also offer meaningful value worth paying for, to an audience with means to support that work. And neither is greater or lesser to the other. I wish more people would take an approach like yours. 🙏

Favorite pieces

To get a sense of what I like to write about and photograph, here are some of my favorites:

Knowing when to change
When change is needed and necessary, red flags appear. An essay reflecting on this.
tanjennts by Jenn ChenJenn Chen
Departing coffee: The skills you carry with you
What are the transferrable skills that coffee people carry over when they leave the industry?
tanjennts by Jenn ChenJenn Chen
Is it possible to build a genuine community under capitalism?
When is it sales, and when is it community? Can it be both?
tanjennts by Jenn ChenJenn Chen
It’s ok to pave your own way
This path is much narrower, with tree branches reaching across. Or, it’s not a path at all, at least not when you first go in that direction. With every step you take, you pave it a little more for someone behind you.
tanjennts by Jenn ChenJenn Chen
New Year dumplings, made with sadness and anger
About the days leading up to the New Year & the days after.
tanjenntsJenn Chen
What happened when I asked ChatGPT to write about coffee
Sorry, AI can’t do everything.
tanjenntsJenn Chen
Listening to your gut
Mine gives me valuable opinions, though I don’t always go with it
tanjenntsJenn Chen
How do you ideate?
It’s time to simplify things
tanjenntsJenn Chen

What others say

Here are some snippets of what others have to say about my newsletter:

Enjoy the newsletter. Always surprised and delighted to find something I really want to click on.
I always forward your emails to people. Your content is rich, educational, relevant and inspiring. Thank you.
Yours is one of the very few newsletters that I want to receive in my primary gmail inbox. I’m always learning and intrigued about the topics you choose. Thank you for raising the important issues and thank you for consistently sharing high quality information!

The tanjennts reader:

  • is a specialty coffee professional, writer, freelancer, or creative person
  • enjoys coffee and/or the stories it inspires
  • is endlessly curious and open

A non-exhaustive list of things I pay for that help me with this newsletter:

  • Grammarly for copyedits
  • Canva for designs and photos
  • Temi for AI transcription
  • ClickUp to organize all my projects and thoughts
  • Bear for notetaking
  • Dreamhost for hosting my website and this subdomain