Jen Zoratti

Columnist

Jen Zoratti is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist and feature writer, working in the Arts & Life department.

Jen uses her thoughtful writing and observational wit to comment on the local issues of the day as well as larger trends in arts, technology, media, pop culture, health, human rights, and feminism.

Jen spent the first decade of her career as a music writer, first joining the Free Press in that role in 2013. In addition to telling readers how concerts were, she interviewed nearly every musician who graced this city’s stages, from St. Vincent to John Fogerty.

After writing a bi-weekly column for the op-ed pages, Jen became a columnist at the paper in 2015. In addition to her opinion pieces, Jen writes features; her profile of Inuit artist Goota Ashoona was nominated for a 2021 National Newspaper Award.

A lifelong Winnipegger, Jen graduated from the Creative Communications program at Red River College in 2006. Prior to coming to the Free Press, Jen was the music editor at the now-defunct alt-weekly Uptown Magazine and freelanced for CBC, Huffington Post, as well as a veritable graveyard of now-shuttered Canadian music magazines and websites. She is a former Polaris Music Prize juror, and was selected to serve on the grand jury in Toronto in 2015.

Jen is the author of the newsletter NEXT, which arrives in inboxes every Wednesday.