Jen Safrey

Jen was born in Queens, New York, and raised in Valley Stream, New York, a town that is a stone's throw from Queens but, interestingly, has neither a valley nor a stream. (It does have many delis and pizza joints.) Jen was a scrawny child for whom kickball was a daily gym class torment. Some athletic ability was lurking under the surface, however, because by age 14, she had become a champion baton twirler. Her life centered around practices and competitions for seven years, nearly landing her beleaguered parents in the poorhouse (lessons, costumes, entry fees). Jen also played the flute from age seven, something she still enjoys doing. She headed to Boston in 1989 to study journalism at Boston University and found city life to be perfect. After several good — and bad — experiences at small newspapers, at 22 she was hired on the news copy desk at the Boston Herald, beginning a decade of working nights. The job consisted of laying out pages, writing headlines and captions, editing copy and holding her own in a mostly male newsroom. Jen sold her first novel, In the Home Stretch, to a small press in 1999. Subsequently she was invited to write a novella to be included in a romantic New Year's collection entitled First Night: An Anthology of Romance Novellas from Antares Publishing. She was the recpient of the 2004 Golden Leaf Award for Long Contemporary Romance for A Perfect Pair, Jen's first book for the Silhouette Special Edition series. When Jen has spare time, she spends it doing her newer athletic pursuits: ashtanga yoga, horseback riding and belly dancing. Or she just lies around with her beautiful black-and-white cat, Shaq. Jen can also be found shopping for shoes with her mother or shooting a game of pool with her father — when she ventures back to Valley Stream.