Jennifer Steil

Learn more about Jennifer Steil at JenniferSteil.net

Education & Licensure

PhD Creative Writing, University of Birmingham, England

MS Journalism, Columbia University

MFA Creative Writing/Fiction, Sarah Lawrence College

BA in Theatre, Oberlin College.

Biography

Jennifer Steil is an award-winning author and journalist. Her third book, the novel Exile Music, was released by Viking in May 2020 and won the Grand Prize in the 2020 Eyelands Book Awards and was named a finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Lesbian Fiction Award. Her previous novel, The Ambassador’s Wife, published by Doubleday in 2015, won the 2013 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Best Novel award and the 2016 Phillip McMath Post Publication Book Award. It was shortlisted for both the Bisexual Book Award and the Lascaux Novel Award, and has received considerable critical acclaim. Jennifer’s first book, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (Broadway Books, 2010), a memoir about her tenure as editor of the Yemen Observer newspaper in Sana’a, received praise from The New York Times, Newsweek, and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Jennifer earned her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham, England, an MS in Journalism from Columbia University, an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, and a BA in Theatre from Oberlin College.