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About Jen

Baltimore City, 2024 OTW Artist

Jen Grow’s debut collection, MY LIFE AS A MERMAID, was winner of the 2012 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition. Her work also earned the 2016 Mary Sawyers Baker Award. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, Other Voices, The Sun Magazine, The GSU Review, Hunger Mountain, Indiana Review and many others including the anthology City Sages: Baltimore (City Lit Press, 2010). She co-authored the book Seeking the Spirit (Morehouse Publishing, 2006) with Harry Brunett. She’s received a 2015 Rubys Artist Project Grant for the project "My Father's House"… more

See $20,000 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize Winning Portfolio
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My Life as a Mermaid

"Like the watery bodies it evokes, the prose in these stories is translucent and sparkling... Each story is an exploration of motherhood, wifehood, daughterhood, or neighborhood: the relationships that make up and strangle the characters, who are all, in their own ways, drowning... One story in particular rises above the others: "What Girls Leave Behind," in which an alcoholic mother loses her young girls...Its raw immediacy is equal parts story and slice of pain and will leave you gasping." -Kirkus Reviews

"Winner of the Dzanc Books Short Story Competition, this stunning collection introduces an important new voice in American fiction. The characters—among them a suburban wife, an alcoholic mother, two homeless men, and an injured veteran—grapple with being voiceless and feeling trapped." -Amazon

"Jen Grow's stories are subtle, sophisticated, closely observed, and full of deep perception and real heart." -- Madison Smartt Bell

"Jen Grow’s astonishing collection explores what we think we want, what we think we need--and what we end up with, in language as burnished and gorgeous as a ruby. Filled with a myriad cast of dreamers, housewives and lost souls, all desperate to renovate their lives--or at least understand them-- these stories are both a meditation on escape and a testament to that fragile miracle--hope.” -- Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You

“These sharp, beautiful stories are gem-like explorations of loneliness and longing, cast in prose that is rich with dark humor, danger, and sadness. My Life as a Mermaid is an enchanting collection, and Jen Grow is a thrilling new talent.” – Laura van den Berg, author of The Isle of Youth and Find Me

"Jen Grow writes with tremendous range and a gorgeous depth of feeling, elevating the story form to where it belongs. There is nothing slight in these stories and each is a world expertly, painfully rendered, leaving me feeling at once less alone in the world while opening me up to the myriad lives of others. An absolute gift of a book.” -- Paula Bomer, author of Inside Madeleine

"In My Life as a Mermaid, Jen Grow tenderly illuminates the world of frozen fish sticks, cheap liquor, truck-cab homes, game show television, and post-war traumas. There is grace in each one of these unforgettable and moving stories."
-- Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Wonder Bread Summer

  • Jen Grow
    Jen Grow
    A reading in August 2015 at Starts Here! An Ivy Bookshop Reading Series at Artifact Coffee, hosted by Jen Michalski.
  • I Get There Late- Excerpt from MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
    " “Listen,” I finally say, “I want to apologize about everything back then. I’ve really changed a lot in the last few years.” I don’t mean it, but I say it because I want them to let me in. I have nowhere else to go. The dog is looking at me through the screen door. He wags his tail."
  • The Rumpus- Review of MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
    "By showing us women at their most intimate moments of pain and loss—in their most disturbing honesty—Grow’s collection highlights the ways we ask women to be more than they are. Her deft writing provides the reader with complex, intimate human portraits." - Heather Partington, The Rumpus
  • American Book Review- Review of MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
    "These are stories that will stand up to re-readings; stories that will read fresh 30 years from now." - Judith Powell, American Book Review
  • My Life as a Mermaid- Title story from MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
    "I get another letter from my sister who is in Honduras riding mules and skidding around the muddy mountain roads in a pickup truck. The roads have curves sharp enough to invite death, sharp enough to see yourself leaving."
  • Still at War- Story in MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
    They said, “We understand your concern. We want to help if we can, but don’t call us unless it’s an emergency. Psychotic episodes are normal,” they said. “They’re not emergencies. Your husband might start drinking too much. Don’t call us about that either. Don’t call us unless he wakes you up in the middle of the night with his hands around your neck. Or with a knife at your throat. Or if you pass out. Something like that. That’s when you should call. But don’t call us unless that kind of thing happens. He’ll have flashbacks, that’s totally normal,” they said.
  • Small Deaths- Story in MY LIFE AS A MERMAID
    I always loved the shoes in your closet, standing in rows, as though invisible women were waiting to dance.
  • Book Cover Image and Blurbs
    Book Cover Image and Blurbs
    "Jen Grow's stories are subtle, sophisticated, closely observed, and full of deep perception and real heart." -- Madison Smartt Bell // "Jen Grow’s astonishing collection explores what we think we want, what we think we need--and what we end up with, in language as burnished and gorgeous as a ruby. Filled with a myriad cast of dreamers, housewives and lost souls, all desperate to renovate their lives--or at least understand them-- these stories are both a meditation on escape and a testament to that fragile miracle--hope.” -- Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You // “These sharp, beautiful stories are gem-like explorations of loneliness and longing, cast in prose that is rich with dark humor, danger, and sadness. My Life as a Mermaid is an enchanting collection, and Jen Grow is a thrilling new talent.” – Laura van den Berg, author of The Isle of Youth and Find Me
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