Jia Apple

Jia Apple — born Jeanette Irene Apple, who shortened it because “life can be too short to waste time” — is a lifelong artist, author, and the storyteller of the Awaken Village. The eighth of ten children from Indiana, a self-taught portraitist who has painted and privately taught for twenty-five years, a mother and grandmother now living in Colorado, Jia came to serious writing the hard way: months on her back from a life-threatening wound from a medical procedure, an ordeal that became part of The Tell: A Day in the Life of Jubilee Given (2024) — her award-winning mosaic novel that weaves 365 days drawn from across a life into a single day, showing readers firsthand how to navigate life’s most difficult passages. It won Best Cover Design at the 2024 American Best Book Awards.

Her Village catalogue has grown into a shelf of its own — the intimate poetry collection Wiseheart (2025) and the memoir Oft Made to Wonder (2026), her life story told through her fourteen-year-old eyes — and her service runs as deep as her art: she is a speaker and workshop leader for The Compassionate Friends, the community of bereaved families, and founder of The Megan Jean Hope Foundation, devoted to helping women and children in need. In Jia the Village has its elder artist: proof that creativity, faith, and an enormous heart can turn even the hardest chapters into something that helps others through theirs.