Jennifer Vanderbes

Jennifer Vanderbes was born in New York City. She attended the Dalton School and earned a B.A. in English magna cum laude from Yale University. While at Yale, she began writing for the Yale Daily News and was featured on CBS Evening News for her investigation into a suspicious egg donor agency that was then closed down due to her reporting. She graduated from Yale in seven semesters, and worked at CNN during her junior year. After Yale, Vanderbes worked as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette before moving to Iowa City to attend the Iowa Writers' Workshop as a Truman Capote Fellow.

After receiving her MFA in Fiction Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she studied with Pulitzer Prize-winner Marilynne Robinson, Vanderbes was awarded creative writing fellowships at the University of Wisconsin[1] and Colgate University.

In 2003, her debut novel Easter Island (Dial Press) was named one of the best books of the year by The Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Post Book World, and was translated into sixteen languages. The novel combines adventure, mystery, and archaeology in several plotlines linked to Easter Island, the remote South Pacific island famed for its immense Moai (statues). Vanderbes was named to People Magazine's annual "It List".

In 2007, Vanderbes published her second book, Strangers at the Feast. The novel depicts two Connecticut families, one white and one black, connected by a horrific crime on Thanksgiving Day. Oprah Magazine called it "a thriller that also raises large and haunting questions about the meaning of guilt, innocence, and justice."

Her third novel, The Secret of Raven Point (2014), follows a young WWII army nurse determined to find her older brother who’s gone missing in action in Italy. The New York Times celebrated the "two separate mysteries [that] create and maintain suspense throughout this gripping World War II coming-of-age novel." The Washington Post called it “fresh, compelling… War gives men and women a chance to become monsters or heroes, and Vanderbes finds her footing exploring these two extremes…[ Juliet] is a companionable protagonist... she emerges from the experience as someone altered yet not conquered by war….Vanderbes performs admirably.[2]” And in a starred review, Library Journal said about it, "Readers will fall in love with the delightful Juliet, who is a smart and courageous heroine....the only disappointing thing about this book is that it has to end."

During graduate school, Vanderbes wrote a one-act play called "The Applicant" which was produced by the Soho Rep theater in New York. In 2014, she returned to playwriting, and her two-act play, Primating[3], about primatologists in Africa, was optioned by Tony-award winning producers Jeffrey Richards Associates,[4] who also produced August: Osage County and All The Way. The play revolves around two of the world’s leading primatologists, who reunite at a chimp reserve twenty-five years after a dashed love affair. The headstrong, brainy ex-lovers use what they know about primate behavior to justify their own past decisions, igniting a full-blown battle of the sexes - and wits - as they pit man against woman and ape against man.

In 2017, her first investigative non-fiction book, The Gatekeeper: Dr. Frances Kelsey and the Band of Unlikely Heroes Who Stopped Thalidomide, was contracted by Random House and Harper Collins UK for publication.

Vanderbes is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Cullman Fellowship, and a Sloan Foundation Grant. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times,[5] The Wall Street Journal,[6] and The Atlantic.[7] Her short fiction has appeared in Granta[8], Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Best New American Voices 2000.

She was named an NEH Public Scholar for 2019-2020 for her investigation into the thalidomide scandal.

She also writes for film and television, developing projects with HBO, Netflix, Bravo, TriStar, and Paramount.

She lives in New York City.