Summary
Jess Rinker is the author of several acclaimed books for young readers, including picture book biographies and middle grade fiction. Her picture book biography Gloria Takes a Stand, which introduces young readers to feminist icon Gloria Steinem, was named a Bank Street College Best Book in 2020. Send a Girl!: The True Story of How Women Joined the FDNY was nominated for the New Jersey Library Association Children's Book Award in 2024.
Jess’s middle grade novels include The Dare Sisters and its sequel, The Dare Sisters: Shipwrecked!, which earned a nomination for the Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award in 2024. Additional middle grade novels include The Hike to Home, Out of Time: Lost on the Titanic, and Monolith, which is currently in the running for the Whippoorwill Award. Determined to not be held to a single age-category of writing, Jess has also published creative nonfiction and numerous articles for theatre, travel, and parenting magazines, and most recently had an essay accepted into the anthology Spinning Toward the Sun, “A guidebook for writers and other creatives, looking for help and hope in troubled times”.
Beyond her books, Jess’s writing has been recognized with numerous literary honors. In 2024, her novel excerpt The Girl in the Window won First Place in Hunger Mountain: The Katherine Paterson Prize. She was also selected as a Writer in Residence at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and in 2024, she was awarded a sponsorship to attend the Rebecca Dykes Writers and Highlights Foundation program on Writing Through Trauma to Empower.
Jess holds a B.A. in Social Welfare from Bloomsburg University and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she received multiple academic scholarships for her work in short stories and creative nonfiction. She was honored with the Excellence in Teaching and Learning Award in 2021 for online course development and teaching English Composition and Creative Writing. She currently lives and writes in the mountains of West Virginia with her beloved, author Joe McGee.
Education
- MFA, Vermont College of Fine Arts
- B.A., Social Welfare, Bloomsburg University