About Jennifer

Jennifer Cognard-Black, Professor of English at St. Mary's College of Maryland, received her B.A. in English and music from Nebraska Wesleyan University, summa cum laude, her M.A. in fiction and essay writing from Iowa State University, and her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in nineteenth-century literature and feminist literary theory. Jennifer's specialties are women novelists, Victorian adaptations, fiction writing, and the literatures of food. A two-time Fulbright scholar to The Netherlands and Slovenia, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and the winner of the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching — considered the "Nobel Prize of teaching" with a cash prize of $250,000 — Jennifer's books include Narrative in the Professional Age (Routledge 2004); Kindred Hands (Iowa UP 2006); a writing textbook, Advancing Rhetoric (Kendall/Hunt 2006); an anthology of literature with recipes, Books that Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal (NYUP 2014); and a collection of essays, From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines (MSUP 2016). A second volume of food writing, Good Eats: 32 Writers on Eating Ethically — also co-edited with her long-time collaborator Melissa Goldthwaite — is slated for publication with NYUP in January 2024.

Yet Jennifer's interests also encompass images of women in popular culture (she is a member of Ms. Magazine's Committee of Scholars and a past Reviews Editor for Literary Mama); Shakespeare and consumption (she offers a study tour to Stratford-upon-Avon, England); writing theory and its practice; and Victorian visuality, especially the intersections of photography and narrative.

In addition, Jennifer publishes short stories under the pen name J. Annie MacLeod. The recipient of both a Maryland State Arts Council and a Mid-Atlantic Arts Council grant, three of her stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she's been published in many journals, including Story Magazine, The Cream City Review, So To Speak, Roanoke Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Versal, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her two lecture series with The Great Courses reflect her creative work—"How to Become a Great Essayist" (2016) and "Great American Short Stories" (2019) — while her series with Audible.com, "Books that Cook: Food and Fiction" (2021), speaks to her lifelong interest in relationships among food, storytelling, and identity.

Jennifer's latest project is a novel fictionalizing the scandalous bits of Edith Wharton's life, under the working title Making Up. She is represented by the Gernet Company.