Jenna Blum credits The Review for early success
SIOUX CITY, Iowa — During a recent visit to Briar Cliff's campus, bestselling author Jenna Blum credited The Briar Cliff Review for contributing to her early success as a writer.
Blum's 2001 short story entry, "Those Who Save Us," was featured in The Review.
She eventually turned that short story into a bestselling novel.
"The encouragement of having Briar Cliff pick up the story — it gave me goosebumps," Blum said. "I can't even express how much that meant."
Blum returned to Briar Cliff in November to conduct a live reading of her works and help celebrate the silver anniversary of The Briar Cliff Review — which was first published in 1989.
"It's one of the highest-end literary magazines out there," Blum said. "Each one is a work of art."
Blum, who has been selected as one of "Oprah's Top 30 Women Writers," is a New York Times and No. 1 international bestselling author of Those Who Save Us (Harcourt, 2004) and The Stormchasers (Dutton, 2010). The Stormchasers, her critically acclaimed and reader-beloved second novel, was a Dutch bestseller, Boston Globe bestseller, Target Emerging Author Pick and BORDERS bestseller.
She is a graduate of Boston University, where she earned a master’s degree in creative writing, taught creative and communications writing and was the editor of AGNI Literary Magazine. She also taught master novel workshops in Boston for Grub Street Writers and now writes monthly Writer on The Road and Friday Five-0 columns for Grub Daily. Currently, she is working on the screenplay for Those Who Save Us and researching her third novel.