Jennifer Sears is the author of What Mennonite Girls Are Good For, winner of the 2025 John Simmons Iowa Short Fiction Award. She has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation of the Arts and the 2024 NeMLA Fiction Book Award. Her stories and essays have been cited in Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. She is associate professor of English and creative writing at New York City College of Technology/City University of New York and lives in Brooklyn.