Jennifer Severn has been writing almost as long as she’s been able to read – no blank piece of paper was safe in her childhood home. After the need for a living wage demanded some detours, a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis at 32 finally forced her to abandon her busy city life to sit down and write again – commercial and technical writing, then profiles and human interest stories for The Triangle, her local community newspaper.
Jennifer’s manuscript Long Road to Dry River was shortlisted for the Finch Prize for Memoir in 2018. Her novella manuscript Garnet was short-listed for the Viva la Novella prize and long-listed for the Queensland Writers Centre’s ‘Publishable‘ program in 2022. Now novel-length, Garnet will be published by Vine Leaves Press in early 2026.
Her story ‘Nobody Owns a Fire’, one of eight linked stories that comprise Garnet, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2024.
She has been published in Wordgathering, a digital anthology run by Syracuse University, New York State, US, and fourW, an annual anthology of prose and poetry published by the Booranga Centre at Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia.
Her work has also featured on the ABC Country Hour program and Edge FM.
Jennifer lives in Quaama, a village on the banks of Dry River in the far south coast hinterland of NSW, with her husband and their ratbag rescue terrier, where she writes while alternating between practical management of, outright denial of, and gratitude for, her physical limitations.
She acknowledges the Yuin peoples, upon whose picturesque, gentle, unceded lands she lives and works.