Jessica Keener wrote her first “book” when she was eight years old, stitching construction paper together with yarn, a holiday gift to her parents. As a child, she read and reread Andersen’s and Grimm’s fairy tales, biographies of famous people, mysteries, and animal stories such as Charlotte’s Web and The Yearling, which caused her to sob with bodily abandonment. She wrote poetry in high school and college. After getting a Master’s degree from Brown University in creative writing, she began publishing short stories in literary magazines.

Jessica’s fiction has been listed in The Pushcart Prize under “Outstanding Writers.” Writing awards include a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Grant Program, a Joan Jakobson Scholarship from Wesleyan Writers Conference; a Chekhov Prize for Excellence in Fiction by the editors of Wilderness House Literary Review; and second prize in Redbook magazine’s fiction contest. For more than a dozen years she’s also been a features writer for The Boston Globe, Design New England, O, the Oprah Magazine and other national magazines. In 2001, she published a business memoir, Time to Make the Donuts, with the founder of Dunkin’ Donuts.

Night Swim is her debut novel.