Born in the Boston area to Guatemalan parents, Jennifer De Leon is the award-winning author of the YA novels Borderless, featured on the Today show, and Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From. She is also the author of White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, and Writing which won the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press. She is currently working on two children’s picture books—Sammy and Samuel, and a biography of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú. Jenn is also the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education, an International Latino Book Award-winning anthology. As a tenured Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Framingham State University and faculty member for the Newport MFA Program directed by Ann Hood, she has published prose in over a dozen literary journals including Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and more. She is also a contributor on NPR.
Jenn graduated from Connecticut College with a double major in International Relations and French, earned a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of San Francisco’s Center for Teaching Excellence and Social Justice while in the Teach For America program, and later, a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from UMASS-Boston. She has received several awards and residencies from organizations across the country, including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Hedgebrook, Macondo, VONA, Associates of the Boston Public Library’s Writer-in-Residence Program, and the City of Boston’s Artist-in-Residence Program.
Jenn is the founder of Story Bridge, a program which aims to bring people together from all walks of life to shape, share, and hear each other’s unique stories. Every Story Bridge participant walks away with new, unforgettable connections. Jenn currently makes her home outside of Boston with her husband and two sons.
