Background
Jenny Offill was born in 1968 in Massachusetts, United States. She grew up the only child of two private-school English teachers, moving around the United States from Massachusetts to California, Indiana, and North Carolina.
Jenny Offill. Photo by Michael Lionstar.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where Jenny Offill studied.
2007
Jenny Offill on WNYC New York Public Radio in 2007.
2014
Jenny Offill with Sue Kowalski, Rebecca Makai, Margie White, and Robin Black at Printers Row Lit Fest in June 2014.
2014
Jenny Offill at Fall for the Book in 2014.
2015
Jenny Offill with Helen Phillips at McNally Jackson in 2015.
2016
Jenny Offill in 2016.
2016
Jenny Offill in 2016.
2017
Jenny Offill at the 2017 Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark.
2018
Jenny Offill with Sharif Khan in 2018. Photo by Marco Lappano.
2019
Jenny Offill in Taylor Hall in 2019.
2019
6 W 24th St, New York, NY 10010, United States
Jenny Offill with Dana Spiotta, Leland Cheuk, and Marion Winik in Bo's Kitchen & Bar Room on October 22, 2019.
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill. Photo by Christopher Lane.
Jenny Offill. Photo by Emily Tobey.
2007
Jenny Offill on WNYC New York Public Radio in 2007.
2014
Jenny Offill with Sue Kowalski, Rebecca Makai, Margie White, and Robin Black at Printers Row Lit Fest in June 2014.
2014
Jenny Offill at Fall for the Book in 2014.
2015
Jenny Offill with Helen Phillips at McNally Jackson in 2015.
2016
Jenny Offill in 2016.
2016
Jenny Offill in 2016.
2017
Jenny Offill at the 2017 Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark.
2018
Jenny Offill with Sharif Khan in 2018. Photo by Marco Lappano.
2019
Jenny Offill in Taylor Hall in 2019.
2019
6 W 24th St, New York, NY 10010, United States
Jenny Offill with Dana Spiotta, Leland Cheuk, and Marion Winik in Bo's Kitchen & Bar Room on October 22, 2019.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where Jenny Offill studied.
Charlotte Zolotow Award which Jenny Offill received in 2015.
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill. Photo by Christopher Lane.
Jenny Offill. Photo by Emily Tobey.
Jenny Offill with her husband and daughter.
(Grace's father believes in science and builds his daughte...)
Grace's father believes in science and builds his daughter a dollhouse with lights that really work. Grace's mother takes her skinny-dipping in the lake and teaches her about African hyena men who devour their wives in their sleep. Grace's world, of fact and fiction, marvels and madness, is slowly unraveling because her family is coming apart before her eyes. Now eight-year-old Grace must choose between her two very different, very flawed parents, a choice that will take her on a dizzying journey, away from her home in Vermont to the boozy, flooded streets of New Orleans - and into the equally wondrous and frightening realm of her own imagination.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N6PEPKW/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3
1999
(Jenny Offill describes how tough it is to be a kid when e...)
Jenny Offill describes how tough it is to be a kid when even the (seemingly) best ideas are met with resistance. The text is short, spare, and fall-on-the-floor funny - not to mention utterly child-friendly. Here, accompanied by Nancy Carpenter's hilariously clever illustrations, is a day-in-the-life look at a kid as she torments her brother, her pet, her classmates, and, of course, her mother. The theme of this Dragonfly Book is Just for Fun.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375866019/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i5
2006
(Is it possible to eat snowballs doused in ketchup - and n...)
Is it possible to eat snowballs doused in ketchup - and nothing else - all winter? Can a washing machine wash dishes? By reading the step-by-step instructions, kids can discover the answers to such all-important questions along with the book's curious narrator. Here are 12 "hypotheses," as well as lists of "what you need," "what to do," and "what happened" that are sure to make young readers laugh out loud as they learn how to conduct science experiments (really!)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375847626/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4
2011
(In the beginning, it was easy to imagine their future. Th...)
In the beginning, it was easy to imagine their future. They were young and giddy, sure of themselves and of their love for each other. "Dept. of Speculation" was their code name for all the thrilling uncertainties that lay ahead. Then they got married, had a child and navigated the familiar calamities of family life - a colicky baby, a faltering relationship, stalled ambitions. When their marriage reaches a sudden breaking point, the wife tries to retrace the steps that have led them to this place, invoking everything from Kafka to the Stoics to doomed Russian cosmonauts as she analyzes what is lost and what remains.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345806875/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
2014
(Sparky stars a pet who has more to offer than meets the e...)
Sparky stars a pet who has more to offer than meets the eye. When our narrator orders a sloth through the mail, the creature that arrives isn't good at tricks or hide-and-seek or much of anything. Still, there's something about Sparky that is irresistible.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375870237/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2
2014
(In this hilarious read-aloud featuring robots, fire truck...)
In this hilarious read-aloud featuring robots, fire trucks, and pirates, meet an older sister who’s more than happy to fill her little brother in on all he missed while he was napping. Since none of the other neighborhood kids had to nap, they came over. Then came the robots, and of course the astronauts. It was tons of fun and luckily for the boy (right?!), he slept through it all!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375865721/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i7
2014
(Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a ...)
Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling: she is a fake shrink. For years she has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with her husband and son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. She's become famous for her prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers worried about the decline of western civilization. As Lizzie dives into this polarized world, she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once you've seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a father and Sylvia a recluse, Lizzie is forced to address the limits of her own experience - but still, she tries to save everyone, using everything she's learned about empathy and despair, conscience and collusion, from her years of wandering the library stacks. And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in - funny, disturbing, and increasingly mad.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385351100/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
2020
Jenny Offill was born in 1968 in Massachusetts, United States. She grew up the only child of two private-school English teachers, moving around the United States from Massachusetts to California, Indiana, and North Carolina.
Jenny Offill studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Jenny Offill is the author of novels and children's books as well as an editor and educator. Her first book is Last Things (1999). The book plots science against panache in an enchanting battle for our sympathies. Emotionally torn between her chemist father and oracular mother, the protagonist navigates her way through a crumbling family to discover the beauties hidden at the intersection of education and faith.
She broke through the funk of a 15-year gap between her first and second novels with Dept. of Speculation (2014), a wonderful series of witty, plangent short dispatches about marriage, motherhood, and thwarted aspirations from an unnamed female writer whose life ventures dangerously close to the brink. The next novel, more recent, is Weather (2020), which takes a similarly clever diary-like tack, but it's even better - darkly funny and urgent, yet more outwardly focused, fueled by a growing preoccupation with the scary prospect of doomed earth.
Her children's books are 17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore (2006), 11 Experiments that Failed (2011), Sparky! (2014), and While You Were Napping (2014). Sparky! was adapted into a play. She is also the co-editor of two collections of literary essays, The Friend Who Got Away (2005) and Money Changes Everything (2007) which she produced in collaboration with the novelist, Elissa Schappell. As en educator, she is known for his work at Brooklyn College, Columbia University, Queens University, and Syracuse University.
Jenny Offill is a recognized award-winning author. He is the recipient of the 2006 New York Foundation for the Arts Award, 2012 Ellen Levin Award for a novel-in-progress, and the 2015 Charlotte Zolotow Award. Her novel, Last Things, was selected as New York Times Notable Book and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, Dept. of Speculation, was chosen as one of the top ten books of the year by the New York Times Book Review and was shortlisted for the Folio Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She was shortlisted for the 2016 Dublin Literary Award for her book Dept. of Speculation. It was translated into eleven languages. In 2016 Offill was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
(Is it possible to eat snowballs doused in ketchup - and n...)
2011(In this hilarious read-aloud featuring robots, fire truck...)
2014(Jenny Offill describes how tough it is to be a kid when e...)
2006(Grace's father believes in science and builds his daughte...)
1999(Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a ...)
2020(Sparky stars a pet who has more to offer than meets the e...)
2014(In the beginning, it was easy to imagine their future. Th...)
2014All of Jenny Offill's favorite books are funny and sad. Her favorite books are Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson, Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke, Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison, 77 Dream Songs by John Berryman, The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, and Other Stories by William Gass, The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim, Red the Fiend by Gil Sorrentino, and Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
Quotations:
"I think every novel is a time capsule of sorts. A way to mark how it felt to be alive in a particular place and time. We never know which of our moments will be last ones, but we do know (if we can stand to admit it) that all of them will be lost eventually. Writing fiction is simply a way to say "Look! I was here."
"With activism, the fear doesn’t go away, but maybe the shame of not acting goes away."
"I think fear is useful to a certain degree, in that it can be a spur. But then at a certain point, there’s too much fear and it’s paralyzing."
"I think the love many women feel for their partners and children is fierce to the point of being obliterating. Especially in the early years, it is hard to remember who you are outside of this."
"The writers and artists I admire have an intense curiosity about the world. They show us that everything is interesting if you look at it long enough."
"What I try to capture as a writer is the feeling of being alive, of being awake."
"I can be bolder on the page, as a character. I can gnash my teeth, I can scream and yell, in a way that I'm perhaps too timid to do in real life."
"Careerism is poison, plain and simple."
Jenny Offill is a contributor to Green Peace's ClimateVisionaries Project.
Quotes from others about the person
"Jenny Offill is a master of the right kind of detail." - John Self
"Reading Offill’s work feels like taking flight." - Kristin Iversen
"Jenny Offill writes beautiful sentences; she is also a deft curator of silences." - Ben Lerner
"There is no doubt that Jenny Offill is the writer for this particular historical moment." - Dana Spiotta
Jenny Offill is married to David Hirmes. They have a daughter, Thea.
David Hirmes is an American programmer and digital designer. In previous years, David was the project manager and lead programmer for the MetroFocus and NYC-ARTS iPhone apps. David also was a Senior Web Producer at Thirteen where he oversaw the popular Cyberchase website, among other properties. His projects have received numerous accolades including a Yahoo Site of the Year, the Japan Prize, Pirelli INTERNETional Prize, and an Emmy for Broadband programming.
