Jennifer Florence Steil

Jennifer Steil is an award-winning author, journalist, and teacher currently living in Uzbekistan. Her most recent novel, Exile Music, won the Grand Prize in the international Eyelands 2020 Book Awards and was a finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Lesbian Fiction Award, the Bisexual Book Award, and the Annie Award. It explores an overlooked slice of World War II history, following Jewish musicians who flee Vienna in 1939 to seek refuge in the Bolivian Andes. The Jerusalem Post called it "one of the best novels I have read in a long time,” and the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle wrote, “In a sea of Holocaust literature, “Exile Music” stands out as wholly original and engaging.” Her previous novel, The Ambassador’s Wife, won the 2013 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Best Novel award, the 2016 Phillip McMath Post Publication book award, and was a finalist for the Bisexual Book Award and the Lascaux Novel Award. It was also optioned for a television mini-series. Her first book, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, is a critically lauded memoir about running a newspaper in Yemen.

Jennifer’s work has appeared in the New York Times, New Orleans Review, Saranac Review, World Policy Journal, Mystery Weekly Magazine, The Week, Time, Life, Peauxdunque Review, The Washington Times, Vogue UK, Die Welt, New York Post, The Rumpus, Mystery Magazine Weekly, Irish National Radio, France 24 (English), and CBS radio.

In the last few years Jennifer has given talks in Algeria, New York, Seattle, Dubai, Amsterdam, The Hague, Egypt, Boston, Abu Dhabi, Vermont, Martha’s Vineyard, Washington DC, Nashville, New Orleans, Portland, Bellingham, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Miami, Pittsburgh, and London.