Jennifer Vanderbes was born in New York City in 1974. She received her B.A. in English Literature from Yale University and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Visiting Assistant Professor in 2004. Her short fiction has appeared in BEST NEW AMERICAN VOICES 2000, Northeast Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Her first novel, EASTER ISLAND, was named "a best book of the year" by The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor and was translated into 16 languages. She has held fellowships at the University of Wisconsin, Colgate University, the Sun Valley Writers Conference, the MacDowell Colony, and was recently named a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow.