On the night of Wednesday, Feb. 26, writers and readers alike made their way to Rowan’s University Art Gallery to celebrate the launch of a project years in the making. As visitors filed in through the gallery doors, an air of anticipatory excitement came over the room as they were greeted with the first-released copies of “No Offense: A Memoir in Essays,” the debut book of Rowan alumna Jackie Domenus. 

“Jackie’s essays fueled me, and they always have, even back when Jackie was a student of mine,” said Heather Lanier, assistant professor of writing arts at Rowan and the emcee of the night’s events. “I would read those essays and be excited and be inspired as just a writer, not even as their professor.”

In her opening remarks, Lanier introduced both Domenus’ work, and the writing arts department’s commitment to protecting and respecting queer voices, after which she would go on to extend the microphone to three guest speakers, ready to share their own work with the audience.

Isha Strasser, Matthew Vesely, and Jules Margraf are all queer writers, as well as being fellow Rowan alums. Moving through a short story, a novel excerpt, and a series of poems of their own respectively, their readings provided a wider look at the voices and experiences of queer writers from within the Rowan community.

When she finally took to the lectern herself, Domenus gave a detailed insight into both the book’s background and her own creative process.

“I think I knew coming into the master’s program that I wanted to write creative nonfiction,” said Domenus. “At the time, I surveyed everything I’d written and the ideas for the things that I wanted to write about…and it quickly became clear that most of the essays had to do with uncomfortable conversations, questions, comments that were coming up because of my sexuality at the time, and so I sort of leaned into that.”

Domenus, a queer person and a New Jersey native, earned both a bachelor’s in English and a master’s in writing during her time at Rowan University. Having earned her master’s while working as a high school English teacher, Domenus would develop several of the essays that comprise “No Offense” over the course of her master’s program.

“From the beginning of writing these essays when we were in the writing program, there was always this question of ‘who’s your target audience,’ right? From the jump, I feel like I always said first and foremost other queer and trans people who can relate to it and see themselves in it, but that, secondarily, it would be just regular straight people,” said Domenus. “And now I think it feels…more like an active resistance than I anticipated it would feel like, I think addressing these sort of topics feels weirdly risky and dangerous in a way…but at the same time, that makes you be like fuck you, here’s this book, it’s here, and it exists.”

​​​​”I’ve met Jackie a few times, Jackie graduated from the same program that we’re in right now,” said Ellie Wash, a Rowan student currently working towards their own master’s degree. “And so we’re here to support other people from our field and our program who are doing the same thing we’re trying to do.”

“A bunch of my peers and I are here to show support,” said Kelli Hughes, another student in the writing master’s program. “But especially because we’re in the process of writing essays, and here we are hearing from an essayist who now has that as a published work.”

“No Offense: A Memoir in Essays” was published on Feb. 21, 2025, and is available now online.

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