Appearances
Fall 2024 Book Festivals and Workshops
Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, 1-3 pm, Local Author Panel, Barnes and Noble, East Brunswick, NJ Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024, 11 a.m. to 5 pm, Ridgewood, NJ, Bookends Fall Festival of Books! Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, 7-9 pm, Poems, Prose and Poses Workshop, Hush Yoga Studio Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024, 3-7 p.m., 500 Ocean Ave. N, Belmar, New Jersey, Belmar Public Library Children's and Young Adult Book Fair! Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, East Brunswick Public Library Teen Book Club (private event) ...
Jersey Girls Beachy Book Signings at B&N
Jersey Girls unite! I'll be joining several authors of summery books at two Barnes and Noble locations in July 2024. July 24, 2024 at 6 PM @ Barnes and Noble, East Brunswick, NJ with Christy Schilling, author of, Wish You Weren't Here, and Talia Tucker, author of Rules for Rule Breaking. On July 28, 2024 @ Barnes and Noble in Brick, New Jersey, with Kimberly Brighton, author of the Cape May RomCom Beach Read Series, and Katie Rundle, author of The Shore, for a signing
Writer’s Block 2nd Book Fair April 13th!
Join me and 29 other authors on Saturday, April 13th at the Writer's Block 2nd Book Fair, presented by The Belmar Public Library from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Whether you are looking for the perfect gift for the book lover in your life, or your next favorite summer read, the Writer's Block Book Fair will have a wide selection of the books you are looking for...children's books, romance, fiction, non-fiction and more! Admission and parking are free so come on out and enjoy a beautiful day at...
ABOUT
jen@jendoktorski.com
Jennifer Salvato Doktorski received a 2024 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Jen grew up in New Jersey (Save the jokes, 9 million people can’t be wrong!), where Sundays were all about reading the comics aloud to anyone who would listen (much to the chagrin of her parents and younger sister) and gathering for early pasta dinners at her grandmother’s house, where the dining room became the stage for her family of storytellers. Her summers were spent “down the shore,” dreaming of a career as a marine biologist while reading books, Sun-In in hair, toes in the sand. Jen doesn’t remember wanting to become a writer when she was pouring over the pages of A Bear Called Paddington, Little Women, a Wrinkle in Time, The Outsiders or Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret but she does recall wanting to be the type of adult who never forgot what it was like to be a kid. She also wanted to make people laugh.
Flashforward to college where she majored in English with a writing concentration at Penn State University, but told anyone who asked she was “prelaw” to pre-empt the inevitable question, “What are you going to do with an English degree?” She found out her junior year when she landed her first paid writing gig at the Herald & News, where she wrote obituaries, developed her lifelong love of coffee and news, and collected enough material for her first novel Famous Last Words, a Bank Street College Best Book of the Year, published by Christy Ottaviano Books/Henry Holt and Co. (BFY) in 2013.
After college, Jen, still in denial about how much she wanted to be an author, was a journalist, public affairs specialist, speechwriter, music zine editor, freelance writer, and bookkeeper at a lampshade factory. It wasn’t until she became a mom that she had the confidence to pursue her latent dream of writing books for young people. So she joined SCBWI and several critique groups, wrote while her daughter slept, and racked up rejections in the double digits before landing an agent.
Her second YA novel How My Summer Went Up in Flames was actually published a few months before her first novel by Simon Pulse. (The publishing world can be a wild ride.) For her third and fourth books YA novels, companion books published by Sourcebooks Fire, Jen channeled her love of sea life, music, and the Jersey Shore. Published in 2015 and reissued in 2024, The Summer After You and Me was YALSA Teens' Top Ten nominee that Kirkus called "A thoughtful tale of forgiveness, growth, and the importance of learning to adapt to changes large and small." Named for one of her favorite albums, August and Everything After was published in 2018 and reissued in 2024. (As of this writing, Jen’s still hoping the Counting Crows will return her emails.)
She’s thrilled that her fifth novel, Finding Normal, has been selected for the 2022 Acheven Book Award and found a home a Fitzroy Books. It will be published on Jan. 21, 2025.