All the Bright Places (Niven) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—May 14, 1969 (?)
• Raised—Richmond, Indiania, USA
• Education—B.A., Drew University; American Film Institute
• Awards—Emmy Award (screenwriting); Gambrinus Giuseppe Mazzotti Prize (Italy)
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


With the publication of her first book in 2000, The Ice Master, Jennifer became a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writer. A nonfiction account of a deadly Arctic expedition, the book was named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, and translated into multiple languages.

Jennifer and The Ice Master appeared in Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Talk, Glamour, The New Yorker, Outside, The New York Times Book Review, London Daily Mail, London Times, and Writer's Digest, among others. Dateline BBC, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel all featured The Ice Master as hour-long documentaries, and the book was the subject of numerous European television documentaries. The book has been nominated for awards by the American Library Association and Book Sense, and received Italy's esteemed Gambrinus Giuseppe Mazzotti Prize for 2002.

Jennifer's second book, Ada Blackjack—an inspiring true story of the woman the press called "the female Robinson Crusoe"—has also been translated into multiple languages, was a Book Sense Top Ten Pick, and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the Top Five Arctic books.

Her memoir, The Aqua-Net Diaries: Big Hair, Big Dreams, Small Town, was published in 2010 and optioned by Warner Bros. as a television series.

Her first novel, Velva Jean Learns to Drive (based on her Emmy Award-winning film of the same name), was released in 2009, becoming an Indie Pick for the August 2009 Indie Next List and also a Costco Book of the Month. The second book in the Velva Jean series, Velva Jean Learns to Fly, was released in 2011, the third book, Becoming Clementine, in September 2012, and the fourth, American Blonde, in 2014.

With her mother, author Penelope Niven, Jennifer has conducted numerous seminars in writing and addressed audiences around the world. She lives in Los Angeles. (From the author's website.)