:Jenny Offill

Jenny Offill is the only child of two private-school English teachers. She spent her childhood years in various American states, including Massachusetts, California, Indiana, and North Carolina,{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/28/jenny-offill-dept-speculation-underdog-personas-not-going-to-fly-any-more-interview|title=Jenny Offill: life after Dept. of Speculation – the underdog persona's not going to fly any more|last=Haas|first=Lidija|date=2015-02-28|work=The Guardian|access-date=2017-06-09|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}} where she attended high school and received a BA degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and later, at Stanford University, was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction.{{cite web |url=http://www.slc.edu/faculty/offill-jenny.html |title= Jenny Offill {{!}} Faculty {{!}} Sarah Lawrence College |access-date=2014-12-27 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150119212726/http://www.slc.edu/faculty/offill-jenny.html |archive-date=January 19, 2015 |df=mdy-all }} After graduating, she worked a number of odd jobs: waitress, bartender, caterer, cashier, medical transcriber, fact-checker, and ghost-writer.

"I went to UNC-Chapel Hill as an undergraduate and I studied with Doris Betts, Jill McCorkle and Robert Kirkpatrick among others. All three were great mentors to me as a young writer. Later, I got a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. My big influence there was Gilbert Sorrentino..."
—Jenny Offill, to Ellen Birkett Morris{{Cite web|url=https://authorlink.com/interview/offills-finely-wrought-novel-satisfies-2014/|title=Offill's Finely Wrought Novel Satisfies|date=2014-03-31|website=Authorlink - Writers and Readers Magazine|access-date=2020-03-11}}

Offill's first novel, Last Things, was published in 1999 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and in the UK by Bloomsbury. It was a New York Times Notable book and a finalist for the L.A Times First Book Award. Offill's second novel, Dept. of Speculation, was published in January 2014{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/books/review/jenny-offills-dept-of-speculation.html?_r=0|work=The New York Times|author=Roxane Gay|date=February 7, 2014|quote=...Offill still makes it seem as if the wife’s version of the marriage is story enough and, perhaps, the only story that matters. The book calls to mind another proverb, this one from Madagascar: Marriage is not a tight knot, but a slip knot.|title=Bridled Vows }}{{cite news|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/apr/24/jenny-offill-smallest-possible-disaster/|title=The Smallest Possible Disaster |date= April 24, 2014 |work= The New York Review of Books|author=Elaine Blair}}{{cite magazine|author1=James Wood|title=Mother Courage|url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/31/mother-courage-3|access-date=18 September 2014|magazine=The New Yorker|date=March 31, 2014|quote='Dept. of Speculation' is all the more powerful because, with its scattered insights and apparently piecemeal form, it at first appears slight. Its depth and intensity make a stealthy purchase on the reader.}} and was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review.{{cite web

| title = The 10 Best Books of 2014

| work = Sunday Book Review

| publisher = New York Times

| date = 4 December 2014

| url = https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/books/review/the-10-best-books-of-2014.html?ref=review&_r=1

| access-date = 14 December 2014

}} Dept. of Speculation has been shortlisted for the Folio Prize in the UK, the Pen/Faulkner Award and the L.A. Times Fiction Award. In 2016 Offill was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.{{Cite web|url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/jenny-offill/|title=John Simon Guggenheim Foundation {{!}} Jenny Offill|language=en-US|access-date=2019-04-04}}

Her work has appeared in the Paris Review.{{cite news|title=Magic and Dread|url=http://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/6270/magic-and-dread-jenny-offill|access-date=18 September 2014|work=Paris Review|issue=Winter 2013}} She is also the co-editor with Elissa Schappell of two anthologies of essays and the author of several children's books. Offill's short fiction has appeared in Electric Literature and Significant Objects.

"I have always liked compressed and fragmentary forms. I trace it back to my mind being blown by John Berryman when I was nineteen."
—Jenny Offill, about Dept. of Speculation

{{cite web|author=Cristina Fries |url=https://www.zyzzyva.org/2014/11/10/the-philosophical-novel-couched-in-a-tale-of-marriage-qa-with-jenny-offill/ |title=The Philosophical Novel Couched in a Tale of Marriage: Q&A with Jenny Offill |publisher=ZYZZYVA |date=2014-11-10 |access-date=2020-03-11}}

Offill has taught in the MFA programs at Brooklyn College, Syracuse University,{{cite web|url=https://thecollege.syr.edu/english-department/course-descriptions/ |title=Current English Course Descriptions ENG 650 M006 Forms: Long Story Short: The Art of Radical Compression; 6:30-9:15pm; Instructor: Jenny Offill - College of Arts & Sciences at Syracuse University |publisher=Thecollege.syr.edu |date=2019-10-15 |access-date=2020-03-11}} Columbia University and Queens University of Charlotte.{{Cite web|url=https://www.queens.edu/faculty/jenny-offill.html|title=Jenny Offill |author=Queens University of Charlotte |author-link=Queens University of Charlotte |website=queens.edu|access-date=2020-03-11}}{{Cite web|url=http://cafemfa.com/?p=444|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150427182256/http://cafemfa.com/?p=444|url-status=usurped|archive-date=April 27, 2015|title=Café Américain {{!}} An Interview with Jenny Offill|website=cafemfa.com|language=en-US|access-date=2017-06-09}} She served as Visiting Writer at Syracuse University and Sarah Lawrence College, and as Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College and Pratt University. She is currently the Writer-in-Residence at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.{{Cite web |last=College |first=Bard |title=Jenny Offill |url=https://www.bard.edu/academics/faculty/details/?id=4490 |access-date=2022-08-03 |website=www.bard.edu |language=en}}

As of 2008, Offill worked as a creative writing teacher at Brooklyn College and Columbia University. Her partner, David Hirme, 37, is a Web director for Channel 13, a public television station. They live in Brooklyn with their child, Theo, 3.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/realestate/14sell.html |title=Ax the Drapes; Move the Stuff|first=Gregory|last=Beyer |newspaper=The New York Times |date=2008-12-12 |access-date=2020-03-11 }}

Offill lives in the Hudson Valley.{{Cite web|url=https://themillions.com/2020/01/jenny-offill.html|author=Daniel Lefferts|title=Jenny Offill Exerts Herself|date=2020-01-15|access-date=2020-03-11}}

File:Jenny offill 2014.jpg

• Last Things. Bloomsbury, 2000. {{ISBN|9780747551478}}
• {{cite book|title=Dept. of Speculation|year=2014|publisher=Knopf Doubleday |isbn=978-0-385-35102-7}}
• {{cite book|title=Weather|year=2020|publisher=Knopf |isbn=978-0-385-35110-2}}

• {{cite book |title=17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore |others=Illustrated by Nancy Carpenter |year=2010 |publisher=Random House Children's Books |isbn=978-0-307-55397-3}}{{Cite book |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jenny-offill/17-things-im-not-allowed-to-do-anymore/ |title=17 THINGS I'M NOT ALLOWED TO DO ANYMORE {{!}} Kirkus Reviews |language=en}}
• {{cite book |title=Eleven Experiments That Failed |others=Illustrated by Nancy Carpenter |year=2011 |publisher=Schwartz & Wade Books |isbn=978-0-375-84762-2}}{{Cite book |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jenny-offill/11-experiments-failed/ |title=11 EXPERIMENTS THAT FAILED {{!}} Kirkus Reviews |language=en}}{{Cite web |date= |title=11 Experiments That Failed by Jenny Offill |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780375847622 |access-date=2023-05-10 |website=www.publishersweekly.com}}
• {{cite book|title=Sparky!|year=2014|publisher=Random House Children's Books|isbn=978-0-375-98859-2}}
• While You Were Napping, Random House Children's Books, 2014. {{ISBN|9780375865725}}

• {{cite book|author1=Jenny Offill|author2=Elissa Schappell|title=The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women's True Life Tales of Friendships that Blew Up, Burned Out or Faded Away|year=2005 |publisher=Crown Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-307-41937-8}}
• {{cite book|author1=Jenny Offill|author2=Elissa Schappell|title=Money Changes Everything: Twenty-two Writers Tackle the Last Taboo with Tales of Sudden Windfalls, Staggering Debts, and Other Surprising Turns of Fortune|year=2008|publisher=Broadway Books|isbn=978-0-7679-2283-8|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/moneychangesever00jenn}}

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{{Commons category}}

• [http://jennyoffill.com/ Official website]
• {{cite web|last=Martin |first=Rachel |author-link=Rachel Martin (broadcast journalist) |url=https://www.npr.org/2014/01/26/265674275/in-fragments-of-a-marriage-familiar-themes-get-experimental |title=Interview: Jenny Offill, Author of 'Dept. of Speculation': In Fragments Of A Marriage, Familiar Themes Get Experimental |publisher=NPR |date=2014-01-26 }}

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Category:1968 births

Category:Living people

Category:American women novelists

Category:Novelists from Massachusetts

Category:20th-century American novelists

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:21st-century American novelists

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni

Category:Brooklyn College faculty

Category:Columbia University faculty

Category:PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners

Category:Novelists from New York (state)

Category:American women academics