Jennifer
Fitzgerald
Writer. Performer. Excellent Sleeper.
I was born and raised on Staten Island, which is the borough of NYC that big orange ferry will take you.
After college, I moved into the city and began my career by writing and performing sketch comedy before eventually moving to Los Angeles. Once there, I waited a lot of tables and bartended whenever I wasn’t booking small parts on television shows often portraying a woman who waits tables or bartends. Go figure. In addition to an extensive list of odd jobs—and even odder comedy shows—I have written copy for websites, advertising emails, punched up jokes for other people’s screenplays, and performed my one-woman show, Memoirs of a Flaker.
Some of my favorite childhood memories are of getting taken along on adventures with the characters in books.
For me, stories provided relief from the endless worry I seemed to have been born with, they gave me a safe oasis from the often hostile environment I lived in, and helped explain a big and confusing world. My MFA is specifically in Writing for Young People. In my stories for children, I try to offer kids the same conspiratorial giggles, moments of solidarity, and safe harbor given to me by Judy Bloom, Beverly Cleary, and Paula Danziger.
I received a BA in Communications from Hofstra University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. I live in California with several once stray, but now very spoiled fur-babies.
Fun Facts!
Favorite Books for Kids: Too many to list, of course, but anything written by Katherine Applegate, Roald Dahl, Kate DiCamillo, Rebecca Stead, or Jason Reynolds is guaranteed to be brilliant. I will devour anything involving dragons, witches, and kids who get revenge on anyone who is mean to animals. The final installment of Knuffle Bunny destroyed me. I think about The Inquisitor’s Tale by Adam Gidwitz daily, and my copy of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman is so worn that it’s starting to disintegrate.
Favorite Books for Adults: All things David Sedaris. Also, A Visit From the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, The Push by Ashley Audrain, and anything by R.F. Kuang or Ottessa Moshfegh. Also, if it’s got Celtic mythology in it, like the brilliant Savage Her Reply by Deirdre Sullivan, I am in.
Weirdest Fun Fact: I had an allergic reaction to a costume and almost went into anaphylactic shock on the set of Mad Men.
Second Weirdest Fun Fact: I got a gig as a background performer playing a murder victim in the Ashley Judd movie Kiss The Girls. They took a bunch of crime scene photos of me to use in the film and let me keep some. I mailed them to my Mom for safe keeping, but forgot to include a letter explaining what the photos were for. She is still mad at me.
First Writerly Attempt: At age ten, I wrote a story about Debbie Harry deciding to name her band Blondie. It was essentially an examination of how intensely cool it would be to stay out all night drinking and getting into fights at the rock clubs of New York City. In hindsight, it was probably a red flag that at least one adult in my immediate circle should’ve noticed.
Favorite TV show: Sesame Street. I am forever ride or die for Grover.
Biggest Pet Peeves: Strawberries in salads, manspread, and the people who wait until the light turns green to put their left turning signal on. But the biggest one of all is anyone who tries to give you “guidance” that you cannot, or that you should not, do something (usually because it makes them uncomfortable) when you know in your gut that you can and should.