Interview on Maryland Public Television for the 2017 Baker Awards starting at 3:40.
Interview on Maryland Public Television for the 2016 Baker Awards starting at 12:32. (below)
“Fall Arts Guide- Name to Know: Jen Grow, Writer” — The Baltimore Sun
“With souped-up top prize, Baker Artist Awards exhibit offers diverse rewards” — The Baltimore Sun
“Like the watery bodies it evokes, the prose in these stories is translucent and sparkling…” — Kirkus Review
“By showing us women at their most intimate moments of pain and loss—in their most disturbing honesty—Grow’s collection highlights the ways we ask women to be more than they are. Her deft writing provides the reader with complex, intimate human portraits.” — The Rumpus
“In her debut collection of short stories, My Life as a Mermaid, Jen Grow traces this startling silhouette of The American Dream’s modern incarnation, characterized by regret, dissipating love, and incurable inertia.” — The Literary Review
“Grace Paley was referring to Isaac Babel and his Red Cossack stories when she spoke of the tremendous imagination it takes to understand and write about real life in it’s most harrowing moments. Jen Grow has that kind of imagination. These are stories that will stand up to re-readings; stories that will read fresh 30 years from now.” — American Book Review
“Grow’s stories are crisply told, trimmed of unnecessary digressions and prolix prose. The result is a series of probing and memorable character studies of people doing their best to swim rather than drown in the deep and often stormy waters of their lives.” — Read Her Like An Open Book Review
“Grow does not leave us stranded in despair because she suggests that it is only through our pain and through our willingness to lose everything, because we have nothing left to lose, that we are connected to each other.” — JMWW Review
WYPR Maryland Morning Interview (podcast)
“[There] aren’t any mermaids in your book. I’m guessing you haven’t actually lived as a mermaid? Only in my head…” — TNB Self-Interview
“Let’s say the first time she tries to walk out she loses her car keys in the front yard at night. She’s sassy, maybe a little drunk. She tosses her keys in the air but misses them on the way back down.” — TNB Fiction Excerpt
“[My] biggest obstacle to writing is my own head. Self-doubt is a giant pain in the ass. Some days, I have doubts about my doubts…” — Writing and Wellness (guest blog)
“I think it’s an ongoing dance to learn how to make friends with time and get it to work for you.” — CarolineLeavittville Interview
“I’m really interested in negative space in literature, how it shows up as quiet tension or loss.” — JMWW Interview- The Negative Space of Jen Grow by Curtis Smith