Jennifer Bryan grew up on Air Force bases in Hawaii and Spokane, Washington. She earned an MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University and a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University where she teaches creative writing and composition.

She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the artist Arjan Zazueta, their daughter, and a Beagle-mix rescue who spends most of his time sleeping. She is a competitive Masters powerlifter and loves a good cappuccino.

Her stories have appeared in literary journals including The Missouri Review, Sycamore Review, LIT, and The Baltimore Review. She was the 2011 Kimmel Foundation Award writing recipient and has held residencies at the KHN Center for the Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. Her book of short stories was a finalist for the 2025 FC2 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize and the 2024 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. She is at work revising a novel.