Jennifer Salvato Doktorski received a 2024 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is the author of five YA novels, HOW MY SUMMER WENT UP IN FLAMES, FAMOUS LAST WORDS, a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of the Year, THE SUMMER AFTER YOU & ME, a YALSA Teens’ Top 10, AUGUST & EVERYTHING AFTER and the forthcoming FINDING NORMAL 2025.

Her first paid gig was writing obituaries for the North Jersey Herald & News, where she developed a life-long taste for coffee, news, biting sarcasm, and irreverent humor. She also worked as a speech writer, bank teller, ghostwriter, bookkeeper in a lampshade factory, pet shop clerk, and music zine editor.

She lives with her family in New Jersey and spends her summers “down the shore,” where everything’s always all right.