April 22, 2025

Jamie Brenner is the author of eight novels including the national bestsellers The Forever Summer and Blush. Her short story “Gold Party” is in development as a feature film. She grew up in suburban Philadelphia and studied literature at The George Washington University, then moved to New York City where she worked in book publishing before becoming a novelist. Her next novel, The Weekend Crashers, is slated for publication on November 4, 2025, from HarperCollins/Park Row Books. It will be her first book set in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

Brenner will join the Drexel Writing Festival on Friday, May 2 from 1–2 p.m. in the Drafting Room of The Study at University City for a reading and discussion. Learn more about the Drexel Writing Festival and view a full list of festival events here.

Read more about Brenner in the Q&A below.

How did your experience in the publishing industry influence your writing?

My first job in book publishing was at HarperCollins in the publicity department for high-end literary books—Barbara Kingsolver, Joyce Carol Oates and all the greats. Just working with these authors made publishing seem less out of reach and less ethereal. I saw how all the people behind the scenes helped usher a book into existence. It gave me more courage to just try it, not feeling like my work had to be so perfect or brilliant right out of the gate.

I was always developing as a writer, taking classes here and there, but it wasn't until later in my career that I started taking myself seriously enough to submit anything for publication. At the time, I was just starting out as a literary agent, which gave me another skill set in terms of working on manuscripts and thinking about things from the sales side instead of just being on the publisher side.

What was the best part of working in publishing?

I feel like I experienced sort of the last gasp of old-world publishing. It was this bridge just towards the end of the 90s, right before the internet exploded and Amazon appeared on the scene. It was the last moment of old-world books and old-time editors and long lunches and the things that are totally romanticized today. In the moment, I didn't appreciate it. Now I'd say that was the best experience, although it makes it hard to watch publishing get more and more depersonalized and sped up—all the things that happen with progress.

What does your creative process look like?

I’m fascinated by family dynamics—mothers and daughters, sisters and sisters, married couples. It's always the tension of those relationships that give me ideas for books. Sometimes it's something I've experienced myself, sometimes it's something a friend told me, and then I wonder what might happen to escalate it. I like the juxtaposition of people going through difficult or intense times, but just set in a super bucolic background, like a beach town, so I play with setting in that way.

I'm also a big believer in the importance of structure. I outline from the beginning, and I keep refining the outline as I go. Then I get input on my draft, and it's a process of just rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. I thought maybe at some point my process would change or evolve in some way, but there's no avoiding the initial messiness in that bad first draft.

As an educator, what do you like to cover in your workshops?

I've done all sorts of workshops over the years on topics ranging from craft to the industry itself. But to me, you can't have a workshop without talking about structure and plot, at least partly. Workshops are so important because they keep you grounded in the element of craft. Writing is an art, but more than that, it's a craft. If you are solid with your craft and you have a process, then you avoid a lot of pitfalls. Talking about it, reading about it, and working on it is important no matter where you are in your writing or career.

What advice do you have for budding authors or students who wish to pursue creative writing?

Creatively, my advice is to read a lot in the space where you're interested in publishing. If you don't have a real passion and sustained interest in a genre or type of writing, then don't try to publish in that. It's also important to be in touch with people in that world to make connections and promote yourself. Start building a community even before you are technically a published writer.

Even more practically, it's important to have a day job and to not let go of the day job too soon. Even if you become successful, and even if you can technically support yourself just as a published novelist, it's still hard to put all that creative pressure on yourself. An ideal scenario is to have something that you like to do as well, which can also keep your life enriched and interesting enough. I think there's this myth of the person who only has to write—they can shut themselves away and just produce and produce. And that's not always the best thing.

What are you reading right now—or recently read—that you just love, and why?

I'm reading an amazing novel that recently came out called Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix. His last book is called The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and it's a masterclass in structure. For anyone who wants to understand the three-act structure and raising stakes and raising tension and character, the book is perfect. There are books that become successful, and they break all the rules, and that's great, but sometimes it's hard to learn from them. When I read a novel that does everything ideally right, but in a way where you can't exactly say how it was done—that's a perfect reading experience and Hendrix delivers that.

What will you be discussing and reading at the Drexel Writing Festival?

The topic of my workshop at the Writing Festival is “setting,” so I'll be reading from books that have examples of different ways to use setting to either advance the plot, elevate sense of character or all the other things that setting can do. I'll read a little bit from my own novel, Blush, which came out in 2021, and is set at a vineyard in the North Fork of Long Island. I'm also going to talk about the use of setting in God of the Woods by Liz Moore, the use of setting in Ruth Ware's book, The Woman in Cabin 10. I'm going to include some use of setting in memoir, even though we're talking about fiction.

Where can readers follow you and keep in touch?

On Instagram I’m at @jamiebrennerwrites and my newsletter sign-up is on my website jamiebrenner.com.