Biography

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Jennifer Senior is a staff writer at The Atlantic and winner of the 2022 Pulitzer for Feature Writing. Prior to joining The Atlantic, she spent five years at The New York Times, first as one of its three daily book critics, then as a columnist for the Opinion page. Before that, she spent eighteen years as a staff writer for New York Magazine. Her first book, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, spent eight weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, was named one of Slate's Top 10 Books of 2014, and has been translated into twelve languages. In addition to the Pulitzer, Senior has won a variety of journalism prizes, including two National Magazine Awards, two Front Page Awards, a GLAAD award, and the Erikson Prize in Mental Health Media. (She is also one of the only writers to have been nominated for the National Magazine Award for three years in a row, winning two out of three.) Her work has been featured in many anthologies, including Best American Political Writing (four times), Best American Magazine Writing (twice), Best American Essays and Best American Science and Nature Writing; her Pulitzer-Prize winning feature, “What Bobby McIvaine Left Behind,” was published as a stand-alone book called On Grief: Love, Loss, Memory in the spring of 2023. Oprah called the story “striking and haunting.” Cheryl Strayed deemed it “absolutely extraordinary.” John Green wrote it was “one of the most moving and brilliantly constructed works of nonfiction I’ve ever read.”

Senior has been a frequent guest on NPR (including twice on Fresh Air); she has also appeared on numerous television programs, including Morning Joe, Amanpour and Company, PBS Newshour, Dateline: White House, Reliable Sources, Washington Journal with Brian Lamb, Anderson Cooper 360, Good Morning America, and Today. She has spoken at the Sydney Opera House, the Aspen Ideas Festival, the main stage at TED, the main stage at Chautauqua Institution, and many other venues here and abroad. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. with her husband and son.