Jenny Offill

American writer and editor

Jenny Offill

Offill in 2007

Born|  (1968-11-14) November 14, 1968 (age 56)
Massachusetts, U.S.
Education| University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (BA)
Genres| Novelist, children's writer, editor
Website
jennyoffill.com

Jenny Offill (born November 14, 1968) is an American novelist and editor. Her novel Dept. of Speculation was named one of "The 10 Best Books of 2014" by The New York Times Book Review.[1]

External videos

Folio Prize Fiction Festival
Manuscripts Reading Room,
British Library,
Sunday 22 March 2015
Jenny Offill reads from:
Dept of Speculation,
British Library via YouTube[2]

## Early life

[edit]

Jenny Offill is the only child of two private-school English teachers.[3] She spent her childhood years in various American states, including Massachusetts, California, Indiana, and North Carolina,[3] 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.[4] After graduating, she worked a number of odd jobs: waitress, bartender, caterer, cashier, medical transcriber, fact-checker, and ghost-writer.[5]

> "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[6]

## Career

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### Writing

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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[7][8][9] and was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review.[1] 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.[10]

Her work has appeared in the Paris Review.[11] 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.[6]

> "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 [12]

Her third novel, Weather, was shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction,[13] and in December 2020, Emily Temple of Literary Hub reported that the novel had made 13 lists of the best books of 2020.[14]

### Teaching

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Offill has taught in the MFA programs at Brooklyn College, Syracuse University,[15] Columbia University and Queens University of Charlotte.[16][17] 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.[18]

## Personal life

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In 2008, Offill, 39, a writer and creative writing teacher at Brooklyn College and Columbia University, and her partner, David Hirme, 37, a Web director for Channel 13, a public television station, lived in Brooklyn with their child, Theo, 3.[19]

Offill lives in the Hudson Valley.[5]

Jenny Offill,
Texas Book Festival,
Austin Texas,
25 October 2014, 15:26

## Works

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### Novels

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* Last Things. Bloomsbury, 2000. ISBN 9780747551478
* Dept. of Speculation. Knopf Doubleday. 2014. ISBN 978-0-385-35102-7.
* Weather. Knopf. 2020. ISBN 978-0-385-35110-2.

### Children's books

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* 17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore. Illustrated by Nancy Carpenter. Random House Children's Books. 2010. ISBN 978-0-307-55397-3.`{{cite book}}`: CS1 maint: others (link)[20]
* Eleven Experiments That Failed. Illustrated by Nancy Carpenter. Schwartz & Wade Books. 2011. ISBN 978-0-375-84762-2.`{{cite book}}`: CS1 maint: others (link)[21][22]
* Sparky!. Random House Children's Books. 2014. ISBN 978-0-375-98859-2.
* While You Were Napping, Random House Children's Books, 2014. ISBN 9780375865725

### As co-editor

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* Jenny Offill; Elissa Schappell (2005). The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women's True Life Tales of Friendships that Blew Up, Burned Out or Faded Away. Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-41937-8.
* Jenny Offill; Elissa Schappell (2008). Money Changes Everything: Twenty-two Writers Tackle the Last Taboo with Tales of Sudden Windfalls, Staggering Debts, and Other Surprising Turns of Fortune. Broadway Books. ISBN 978-0-7679-2283-8.

## References

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1. ^ a b "The 10 Best Books of 2014". Sunday Book Review. New York Times. December 4, 2014. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
2. ^ "Jenny Offill reads from Dept of Speculation". YouTube. April 23, 2015. Archived from the original on December 22, 2021. Retrieved March 11, 2020.
3. ^ a b Haas, Lidija (February 28, 2015). "Jenny Offill: life after Dept. of Speculation – the underdog persona's not going to fly any more". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved June 9, 2017.
4. ^ "Jenny Offill | Faculty | Sarah Lawrence College". Archived from the original on January 19, 2015. Retrieved December 27, 2014.
5. ^ a b Daniel Lefferts (January 15, 2020). "Jenny Offill Exerts Herself". Retrieved March 11, 2020.
6. ^ a b "Offill's Finely Wrought Novel Satisfies". Authorlink - Writers and Readers Magazine. March 31, 2014. Retrieved March 11, 2020.
7. ^ Roxane Gay (February 7, 2014). "Bridled Vows". The New York Times. "...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."
8. ^ Elaine Blair (April 24, 2014). "The Smallest Possible Disaster". The New York Review of Books.
9. ^ James Wood (March 31, 2014). "Mother Courage". The New Yorker. Retrieved September 18, 2014. "'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."
10. ^ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Jenny Offill". Retrieved April 4, 2019.
11. ^ "Magic and Dread". Paris Review. No. Winter 2013. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
12. ^ Cristina Fries (November 10, 2014). "The Philosophical Novel Couched in a Tale of Marriage: Q&A with Jenny Offill". ZYZZYVA. Retrieved March 11, 2020.
13. ^ "Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist announced". Books+Publishing. April 22, 2020. Retrieved May 5, 2020.
14. ^ Temple, Emily (December 15, 2020). "The Ultimate Best Books of 2020 List". Literary Hub. Retrieved January 4, 2021.
15. ^ "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". Thecollege.syr.edu. October 15, 2019. Retrieved March 11, 2020.
16. ^ Queens University of Charlotte. "Jenny Offill". queens.edu. Retrieved March 11, 2020.
17. ^ "Café Américain | An Interview with Jenny Offill". cafemfa.com. Archived from the original on April 27, 2015. Retrieved June 9, 2017.
18. ^ College, Bard. "Jenny Offill". www.bard.edu. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
19. ^ Beyer, Gregory (December 12, 2008). "Ax the Drapes; Move the Stuff". The New York Times. Retrieved March 11, 2020.
20. ^ 17 THINGS I'M NOT ALLOWED TO DO ANYMORE | Kirkus Reviews.
21. ^ 11 EXPERIMENTS THAT FAILED | Kirkus Reviews.
22. ^ "11 Experiments That Failed by Jenny Offill". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved May 10, 2023.

## External links

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jenny Offill.

* Official website
* Martin, Rachel (January 26, 2014). "Interview: Jenny Offill, Author of 'Dept. of Speculation': In Fragments Of A Marriage, Familiar Themes Get Experimental". NPR.

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