About
At an Icelandic truck stop, 2021.
Jen Burke Anderson was born and raised in a small town on the Central Coast of California. She’s now lived and written in San Francisco for more than 25 years. Her short story “Shelter: A Photo Gallery” appears in Masters Review’s New Voices; it was shortlisted for the Review’s 2022–2023 Winter Short Story Prize for New Writers and is part of a fictionalized memoir in progress about being stranded in Passau, Germany, during the outbreak of COVID-19.
Paul Madonna acknowledged her as a historical source in his latest novel, The Commissions, released in September 2023.
Jen studied fiction with Josip Novakovich at the 2023 Catamaran Writing Conference in Pebble Beach, California. You can find her work in Caveat Lector, Noyo River Review, and The Lowestoft Chronicle. She also blogs about cinema, culture, and society on Medium.com.
“What a privilege to have worked with Jen Burke Anderson, whose insight, exactitude, sense of nuance, and poet’s heart all illuminate and inspire her writing and editing of nonfiction, fiction, and verse.”
— Josh Wilson, Editor, The Fabulist
Jen has traveled extensively through Europe, and much of her material focuses on European culture and issues.
You can often find her reading at Bay Area literary gatherings such as Litquake, Why There Are Words, and the Bazaar Writers Salon.
Jen’s short story “Soul Survivor” won the 2018 Sue Granzella Humor Prize as part of the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition; her poem “Munich Freiheit” was long-listed by Billy Collins in the 2021 Fish Publishing Poetry Competition of Cork, Ireland.
Jen has an A1 zertifikat in German proficiency and hopes to one day see her name on the wall next to David Sedaris at Munich Literaturhaus.