Jen McConnell

Jen McConnell is a fiction writer who dabbles in poetry, with work published in more than forty national and international literary magazines. Welcome, Anybody is her debut collection of short stories. From that collection, the story “Earthquake Weather” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2013 by Terrain, where it was originally published. In 2022, she was nominated again for “The Other Side of Luck,”which was published in Red Rock Review. Her work has recently appeared in the tiny journal, Santa Fe Literary Review, Paragraph Planet, Sequestrum, The Disappointed Housewife, and more. Currently, she serves as Fiction Editor for The Bookends Review and as a reader for Clockhouse. A California native, she received her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College in Vermont and currently makes her home in the Midwest.

Praise for Welcome, Anybody

Welcome, Anybody exquisitely distills the emotional landscape of ordinary people. The life in these stories is remarkable. A true gem of a collection from a writer with real heart.

—Rebecca Rasmussen, author of The Bird Sisters

The characters in these stories stand absolutely still in the middle of their lives while the world spins around them, chaotically and often dangerously. There is an intensity of vision here—both riveting and haunting—that will remind you of Carver's stories, but the territory McConnell has staked out is unquestionably her own.

—Lewis Buzbee, author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

The luminous, compelling stories of Welcome, Anybody capture our yearning for connection; McConnell illuminates those rare moments in life we find both fleeting and transformative with the eye of a master jeweler.

—Tara Ison, author of The List