About Me

Here’s my official bio, the one you’ll find on my book jackets:

Jenny Howard graduated from the University of Southern California and earned her MFA in fiction from Chapman University, where she was a creative writing fellow. She later taught creative writing at Chapman University and at the Orange County School of the Arts. She lives in Southern California with her husband, their three children, a neurotic terripoo, and a precocious sourdough starter named Charles Wallace. Transylvania County is her middle grade debut.

Here’s a bit more, since you went to the effort to find me here (thanks for that, by the way!):

When I was a teenager and even in my early twenties, I was very interested in writers’ schedules. I’d go to writing conferences anxious to hear what time published, successful writers woke up in the morning, or what they ate for breakfast, or whether they did cardio early or yoga late or meditated on a cushion every afternoon while inhaling diffused essential oils (and which essential oils!). I suppose I felt that if I could just get a lock on the right schedule, I’d finally be able to write the stories I’d been trying to exorcise onto the page since I was in my single digits.

What I know now is that the important thing isn’t the schedule, it’s the focus. I have three small children, ages 6, 4, and 1 as of this moment, and I do most of my writing at a little table in the halls of the YMCA by my house between the hours of 6:00am and 8:30am. But sometimes I write at coffee shops. Sometimes I write at the library. Sometimes I write while standing at the desk in my bedroom or at my kitchen counter, or in my car while waiting to pick up my oldest child from school. It turns out, there is not anything magical about the where or the when or even the what I had for breakfast. What matters is that I sink into the work and stay there.

So, if you’re reading this trying to figure out how you can write books (as I would have done), I’m very sorry, but nothing about my bio is going to help. Really, nothing. If instead you’re reading this because you’re curious about the person who wrote that book you love so much, then here are some little factoids about me:

I love gardening. I’m only decent at it, though. Right now in our raised beds we have pumpkins, watermelons, and a lot of broccoli and lettuce going to seed.

I lived in a suburb of Houston, Texas for much of my childhood, but I consider Mission Viejo in Southern California my hometown.

After college, my husband and I got New Zealand work visas and spent a year doing odd jobs, manual labor, and often living out of our car. It was scary and hard and wonderful.

Every year, I host a gingerbread decorating party for my extended family, and it’s gotten a little out of control. We now construct an elaborate village out of gingerbread and eat it on Christmas night.

I started college as a music major. I play bass, guitar, piano, and I love to sing. In an alternate universe somewhere, I’m the bassist or maybe vocalist for a jazz combo or cover band.

I love exercise for its own sake. I think it’s fun! Years ago, I taught yoga and Pilates, among other things.

You know how some people think cilantro tastes like dirt or soap? I think I’m that way about animals. They just don’t strike me as edible and they never have. It’s not hard for me to write characters who eat and hunt animals, though. I understand we’re all different.

I’ve been both sky diving and bungee jumping. I never intend to do either ever again. (Between the two, though, bungee jumping was preferable.)

I used to figure skate. I now go skating with my older children once a week, and it’s one of my favorite things.

I named my sourdough starter Charles Wallace after a character in one of my favorite books. (Do you know what that book is?)

Beautiful passages in novels frequently bring me not only to tears but to sobs. The human spirit is just such a marvel and books, to me, are the realest sort of magic I’ve ever witnessed.