Experience and Expertise
Jennifer Harris is an essayist, novelist, and community psychologist whose work explores the forces that shape how we understand ourselves and one another. Her essays blend personal narrative with a systems-level lens, examining the subtle cultural forces and everyday absurdities that quietly govern us: family, faith, neurodivergence, work, and the search for belonging.
Her recent essays have appeared in Gargoyle, MER, and Blood + Honey. She is the author of the novel Pink (Haworth Press; Bold Strokes Books), and her poetry has appeared in New York Quarterly. She is currently working on Burstable, a collection of essays, and is the founder and publisher of JackLeg Press, a nonprofit literary press dedicated to amplifying diverse voices.
Outside her writing and publishing life, she serves as Senior Vice President of Philanthropy at the National Park Foundation (NPF), where she brings more than 20 years of nonprofit leadership experience. She leads a team of thirty-five with an annual fundraising goal of more than $55 million and helped lead NPF's $1.25 billion campaign.
She holds a PhD in Community Psychology from National Louis University, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. She lives in Washington, DC.