Jen Burke Anderson has written poetry, essays, journalism, fiction, and drama in San Francisco for more than 25 years, and has been shortlisted for the Masters Review Winter Short Story Prize for New Writers 2022–2023. Her work recently appeared in Tillism: Magical Words from Around the World, Caveat Lector, and The Lowestoft Chronicle.

She wrote, acted in, and composed music for the radio drama “Paper Thin,” which aired on KFJC 89.7fm, Los Altos Hills, California, in June 2021.

Much of Jen’s work focuses on alienation, the search for wisdom in an age of mass disruption, and Silicon Valley’s aim at our capacity for self-reflection, nonconformity, and nuanced thought. Recent influences include Gary Shteyngart and Jonathan Coe, as well as critics Evgeny Morozov, Meghan Daum, and William Deresiewicz. Her favorite periodicals are Liberties Journal and Salmagundi Magazine.

Her poem “Munich Freiheit” was longlisted in the 2021 Fish Publishing Poetry Contest (Cork, Ireland); her creative nonfiction piece “Daybreak Nation” earned honorable mention in 2020’s Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition; and her short story “Soul Survivor” won the Sue Granzella Humor Prize in that same competition in 2018.

Jen follows modern classical and alternative pop music, as well as field-recording and sound-collaboration releases, and has volunteered with KFJC 89.7fm as scriptwriter, in-house production assistant, and on-air voice talent for more than 30 years. She’s also a committed cinephile and admires Paulo Sorrentino, Ruben Östlund, and Terence Davies.

She has traveled extensively through Europe, studies German and Portugese, and is at work on a mixed-media memoir centered around her time stranded in Passau, Germany at the onset of COVID-19.