About Jocelyn

Jocelyn Foster Tatum writes about people, and the beauty of their imperfect perfection, like an English garden or a Texas-native landscape in an urban setting, intrigues her. Writing is how she makes sense of the world around her, and she believes any topic in the news is told best by putting a face on it, as she likes to tell her college journalism students and contributing writers she mentors. It is in people’s stories that readers start to care about topics like immigration, sex trafficking, intellectual and developmental disabilities or suicide, she says. It is more difficult to care about topics in the news without the human element, especially when the writing is focused on numbers and hard data, or dependent on minimal reporting. Stories of people's lives connect us on a deeper and more empathetic level, she says.

Jocelyn has an undergraduate degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in narrative journalism. For her, philosophy was a study of human nature on a macroscopic level. Journalism is her lifelong microscopic study but with a macro scope.

After a stint as a general assignment reporter at a daily newspaper, Jocelyn moved back home to Fort Worth and began teaching as a college journalism instructor while freelance writing for magazines. She has been publishing narratives long and short for more than 16 years and teaching for 12. Over the years, stories have been picked up by national news organizations.

Once, Maria Shriver came to Fort Worth with the Today Show to cover one of her stories about two people in their 30s with Down Syndrome who had been friends since they were toddlers. They were getting married, and Jocelyn felt their joyous narrative was the way into the deeper truths and difficulties adults with ID/D face in our failing mental health care system. But it also told a story of overcoming and the meaningful lives these two were capable of living and contributing. Storytelling and connecting.

She is now the founding executive editor of a meaningful new project to the Fort Worth community — a women’s magazine in Fort Worth called One To Know. She has built a team of talented and creative minds, guiding and mentoring them in the craft of feature writing and narrative journalism to connect women (and men) near and far.