Jen Bryant
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An Interview with Jen
(photo: Amy Dragoo; Daily Local News, 2008)

I have always loved books. Before I learned to read, my mother read aloud to me from Dr. Seuss—his Green Eggs and Ham was my favorite for a long time. I also loved fairy and folk tales such as Cinderella, Hansel & Gretel, and Rumpelstiltskin.

Many of my family members were music lovers. My parents played opera recordings in the house almost every day and my grandfather, who lived next door, was an excellent pianist. From a very young age, I loved to dress up in my mother’s clothes and dance to opera music. My favorite opera was Carmen, and I guess I fancied myself as a young gypsy for several years. My grandfather liked me to sit next to him on the piano bench while he played George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” He also introduced me to the different instruments through a narrated version of “Peter and the Wolf” (I always cried when the wolf ate the duck, so he told me that—at the very end—Peter pulls her out.)

One afternoon when I was in fourth grade, my mother took me to a horse farm for my first riding lesson. From that day on and until I left for college, I became obsessed with horses. I read everything I could get my hands on about caring for them, riding them, healing their injuries and illnesses, even their history since the prehistoric ages (the first horse had five toes and was the size of a small dog!). I joined the local 4-H Club and competed in their horse judging contests (we were state champions for several years). My favorite fiction titles at this time were the series of Black Stallion books by Walter Farley. I can still picture the shelf where they were kept in our town library. Whenever a new title was added, the librarian would call me and I would run down the street and sign it out. I liked to read in the deep shade of my grandmother’s backyard maple tree, or late at night in my room while everyone else was sleeping.

In high school, I played tennis, basketball, and threw the javelin for the track team. I rode horses on the weekends, and spent long hours on my bike—going nowhere in particular, just cruising around. My high school was very large, and it was the first time I met a lot of kids from the suburbs. I didn’t know it then, but I was glad to live in town where I could go places on my own and not have to rely on my parents to drive me everywhere. When you read my book The Trial, you will see how I was able to draw upon these early memories of Flemington to describe many of the homes, businesses, churches, and other places I liked to visit on foot or on my bike.

I did well in high school, and was accepted to many colleges. But as soon as I visited Gettysburg College in southern Pennsylvania, the choice was easy. I loved the wide open spaces of the Civil War Battlefield and the town of Gettysburg had a deep sense of history, just like my hometown did. I decided to major in French and secondary education, and to minor in German (after years of listening to opera, foreign languages never scared me). I also met my husband, Neil Bryant, at Gettysburg. We were married in the Presbyterian Church in Flemington in June of 1982.

I taught French and German in a high school in Virginia for several years while Neil worked in the medical business. In 1987, we moved back to Pennsylvania and the next year our daughter, Leigh, was born. I quit teaching full-time and started to write nonfiction books for a small publisher in Maryland. I liked writing so much that I gave up teaching altogether and worked for several different publishers as a freelance biographer.

In my thirties, I developed a love for poetry, and started to study with a poet from Philadelphia. Leigh was in elementary school then and I remember putting her on the bus in the morning, then leaving for the long drive into South Philly where I would meet my poetry teacher in a bakery on South Street. We would spend several hours there—about three times per month—reading and writing poems and talking about different styles and forms and subjects. A few of my friends thought I was crazy but I didn’t care. Like Katie in the The Trial, once I decide I want to do something there is very little that can stop me.

Now I have published fifteen books for children, teens, and adults. I also write poems for literary magazines, as well as articles and book reviews. I’ve held on to many of my childhood habits. I still move around a lot (although these days, it’s mostly at the YMCA), listen to classical music, read poetry, novels, and biographies, and spend time wandering aimlessly, thinking about my next article, story, or poem …