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Avid writer, traveler, lover of all things lime-flavored, and eclectic electric guitarist, Jessica Bruder lives in a pea-green cottage in the Alberta Arts district of Northeast Portland.
Her first book -- Burning Book, a narrative non-fiction, photo-illustrated account of the annual Burning Man festival -- was published in August by Simon & Schuster, to enthusiastic reviews in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.
Jessica is currently a staff writer at The Oregonian. She has written more than 120 bylined freelance assignments for The New York Times and covered politics as a staff reporter for The New York Observer. Her stories have also appeared in The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Houston Chronicle.
Jessica's childhood was set in the subtropical wilderness of Montclair, N.J. She has also lived in Massachusetts, where she wheedled Amherst College into giving her a B.A. in French and English, summa cum laude, and was subsequently shipped off on a month's fellowship to South Africa for post-thesis research on apartheid-era censorship. While abroad, she interviewed Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer. Ms. Gordimer also let Jessica pat her dog. Other notable episodes involved chasing ostriches, jumping from riverside cliffs, short-form dating, and braving the streets of Johannesberg with enough pepper spray to ward off a charging elephant.
You may also have seen Jessica in Paris, where she waited tables at an overpriced Morroccan restaurant near Jim Morrison's tomb, attended a semester's worth of university, and shot/printed black and white theater photography. But I don't think she saw you there.
Jessica moved to New York City in July of 2000 to work as an assistant editor at Scholastic Press. She left the job three years later to pursue a career (?) in journalism. In 2005, she completed her master's degree at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she was the co-valedictorian of her class and a (very grateful, deeply blushing) Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship recipient.
Favorite pastimes include: snowboarding on glaciers, playing electric guitar, learning to weld with the good folks at the Madagascar Institute, camping in the desert, lavishing attention on O.P.P. (Other People's Pets), using press credentials to hang out with meatpackers, truck drivers, and ne'er-do-wells, and deploying awful puns.
Least favorite pastimes include: cleaning her room and writing about herself in the third person, though she'll suffer either task to make a good impression.
