Born and raised in rural Australia, Jen Breach (they/them) currently lives and writes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Jen is the author of creative nonfiction book The Longest, Shortest Day, and co-author of the Riley Reynolds chapter books series, featuring the first nonbinary main character for the age group, and written under the pen name Jay Albee.

They are a candidate for an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Jen studied archaeology in college and excavated a colonial whaling station and an Indigenous Australian ritual site, among others. Writing for children involves less whale bones, but more children, so it’s a fair trade.

Jen was a 2012 associate artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida, and a 2010 Australia Council for the Arts’ Emerging Writer Fellow. They were recognized by Arts Victoria in 2014 and 2016. They are thrilled to be a founding imagination investor in 100 Story Building, supporting creativity and literacy in the young people of Melbourne’s West.

They benefited enormously from mentorships throughout their professional and creative career and pay that forward as a mentor for Girls Write Now and The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

Jen acknowledges that the land on which Philadelphia sits is the traditional and unceded territory of the Lanepehoking people. Jen pays respect to the traditional owners of the land, past, present and future.