Jennifer Steil is an award-winning author and journalist. A bisexual writer who has lived in Arabia, South America, and Central Asia for nearly a decade, she is interested in transcultural issues, freedom of expression, and human rights.

Her third book, the novel Exile Music, was published by Viking in May 2020. It follows the lives of a family of Austrian Jewish musicians who seek refuge from the Nazis in the mountains of Bolivia in 1938.

Her first book, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, explores her time as editor of the Yemen Observer in Sana’a, where she navigated censorship, cultural divides, and ethical challenges. Her second book, the novel The Ambassador’s Wife, explores white savior complex and East-West conflicts. 

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, notably in the Seattle Times, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and The New York Times Book Review. It has been published in several other languages, including Italian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Polish. The Mark Gordon Company has optioned the film rights to The Ambassador’s Wife, with plans to create a television miniseries starring Oscar-winner Anne Hathaway.

Currently, she is writing a novel about an underground community of Bolivian LGBTQ artists.

Her freelance work has appeared in the New Orleans Review, Saranac Review, World Policy Journal, Peauxdunque Review, The Week, The Washington Times, Vogue UK, Die Welt, New York Post, Playgirl, The Rumpus, Time, Readers’ Digest Version, Irish National Radio, France 24 (English), CBS radio, and GRN Global Reporter Network Service.

Jennifer earned a Bachelor of Arts in theatre from Oberlin College, a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and a Master of Science in Journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is working on a practice-based doctoral thesis in creative writing at the University of Birmingham in England.

She has taught writing, editing, and publishing at Bournemouth University in England, Rosemont College in Philadelphia, as well as at many other universities in many other countries, including the University of Algiers in Algeria, SUNY Plattsburgh in New York, the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, the University of Central Arkansas, and several universities in Tennessee. She teaches online for the Center for Creative Writing.

Jennifer also works as a freelance book editor.

Website: www.jennifersteil.net

Twitter Username: @jfsteil7

Publications

• The Ambassador's Wife , Doubleday (July 28, 2015)
• The Woman Who Fell From the Sky , Broadway Books (May 2010)
• Not A Rose (CONTRIBUTOR) , CHARTA (2012)
• Exile Music , Viking (May 5, 2020)

Awards

• Best Novel in the 2013 William Faulkner-William Widom Creative Writing Competition(2013)
• Travel Book of the Year by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune(2010)
• Elle magazine's Readers’ Prize (2010)
• First Place, Specialty Reporting Portfolio, the New Jersey Press Association's 1998 Better Newspaper Contest(1998)
• Phillip McMath Post Publication Book Award (2016)

Employment

• Editor in chief at Yemen Observer newspaper (August 2006 - September 2007)
• Senior Editor at The Week (February 2001 - August 2006)
• Freelance journalist at World Policy Journal, Washington Times, Time, Life, Die Welt, France24, AARP.org, Saranac Review, Vogue UK (2007 - 2012)
• Lecturer, Writing, Editing, and Publishing at Bournemouth University, UK (February 2018 - May 2018)

Degrees

• Master of Science in Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (May 1997)
• Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing/Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College (May 1996)
• Bachelor of Arts in Theatre from Oberlin College (May 1990)

Genres of Interest

Fiction, Creative nonfiction, Playwriting, Screenwriting, Children's literature