Jennie Shortridge
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Jennie Shortridge (born September 23, 1959) is a best-selling novelist and off-and-on musician. Born in Grand Forks, North Dakota Shortridge grew up in Maryland and Colorado before relocating to the Pacific Northwest. She now resides in Seattle, Washington with her Australian husband, Matt Gani.
Citing an unhappy home life with a mentally ill mother, Shortridge ventured out on her own at the age of seventeen and began to support herself through a series of office jobs, cooking jobs, and a stint as a plumber, all the while also performing in bands as a lead singer. A job with a small advertising firm began her marketing career, leading to a position as director of sales and marketing for a Denver visual imaging firm during the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1995, Shortridge “decided to climb back down,” the corporate ladder as she says, and began to write full-time as a freelance magazine features writer. Her work appeared in local, regional, and national publications including Natural Home, Mademoiselle, and Glamour.
In 2003, Shortridge’s first novel, Riding with the Queen, was published by New American Library (New York, NY). The story of a young rock-and-roll singer who leaves home to escape a mentally ill mother, Riding with the Queen was not fictionalized memoir, according to Shortridge, but rather a new story using her experiences with both. In 2005, she employed similar technique for her second published novel, Eating Heaven, again by New American Library, the story of a disenfranchised food writer who comes to term with life by caring for a dying uncle.
Shortridge now teaches both adults and children how to write, volunteering a good portion of her time to literacy organizations for children, including 826 Seattle.
About writing, Shortridge says: “I am a writer because I can’t not be one. I write to examine the universal story through the personal lens. I write to put another voice, another viewpoint, out into a world where too many of the voices I hear aren’t telling my story, or my family’s and friends’ stories. Reading was my salvation as a kid, and now, writing is.”
[edit] Bibliography
- Riding With the Queen (2003)
- Eating Heaven (2005)
- Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe (2008)
