Jennifer Crusie, a pen name for Jennifer Smith, was born in 1949. She is an author who writes contemporary romance novels. She has written over twenty books, which are available in 20 countries.

Biography

Crusie was born as Jennifer Smith in Wapakoneta, Ohio, to Jack and JoAnn Smith. She honored her mother’s mother by using her grandmother’s maiden name, Crusie, as her writing name. Crusie has lived and worked in Ohio and New Jersey for most of her life and now lives in Pennsylvania.

She graduated from Wapakoneta High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in Art Education from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. She later received a Master’s degree in Professional Writing and Women’s Literature from Wright State University. Her master’s thesis studied the role of women in mystery fiction from 1840 to 1920. She also earned an MFA in Fiction from Ohio State University and completed all the coursework for a Ph.D. at the same university.

Crusie married in 1971 and moved with her Air Force husband to Wichita Falls, Texas. Her husband was later transferred to Dayton, Ohio, and they divorced. They have one daughter.

Crusie’s first job was as a teacher. She taught preschool, elementary and junior high art, high school English, and college English courses for 15 years in the Beavercreek, Ohio public school system. She taught subjects like art, literature, mythology, the Bible in literature, college writing, creative writing, and British and American literature. She also directed the sets and costumes for the high school drama department. She later taught at Antioch University, Wright State University, Ohio State University, and McDaniel College, where she helped design a graduate program in Romance Writing.

Crusie’s MFA dissertation studied how gender affects storytelling. To research differences in how men and women tell stories, she read 100 romance novels written by women. She planned to read 100 adventure novels by men next but found the romance novels so interesting that she changed her focus to romantic fiction and decided to write a romance novel. In the summer of 1991, she left her job to write full-time. Her first manuscript, Keeping Kate, was completed in 1991 but was not sold. She entered a novella contest in 1991 and won one of twelve places with a story called Sizzle. Shortly after, Harlequin bought Keeping Kate and changed its name to Manhunting, which became her first published novel in February 1993.

For the first three years of her writing career, Crusie’s books were published as category romances under the Silhouette, Harlequin, and Bantam Loveswept lines. In 1995, she signed with St. Martin’s Press and began writing single-title novels, starting with Tell Me Lies. She found it easy to write longer, non-category novels because she focused on telling the most honest stories she knew. Her long partnership with her editor, Jennifer Enderlin, allowed her to explore different storytelling styles. She explained that she did not want to self-publish because her editor, Jennifer, helped her books reach readers. After a ten-year break from publishing, Crusie returned to writing in collaboration with Bob Mayer, experimenting with self-publishing.

Crusie’s books are known for their humor, though she says she does not write to be funny. She believes her characters naturally use humor to deal with life’s challenges. She often imagines her characters before planning the story and creates them as real people with flaws. Her heroines are usually quirky, and her heroes are clever and charming. Many of her characters collect things because she thinks a person’s possessions reveal a lot about them. She has won the Romance Writers of America Rita award twice: once for Getting Rid of Bradley and once for Bet Me.

In September 2004, Crusie met adventure novelist Bob Mayer at the Maui Writers Conference. By the end of the conference, they became friends and began outlining a novel. Within a year, they finished the manuscript, writing it mostly through email. In the novel Don’t Look Down, Crusie wrote the scenes and dialogue for the female character, while Mayer wrote the scenes and dialogue for the male character. Her editor, Jennifer Enderlin, had to ask Crusie who wrote each section because the writing was so similar. The book had an initial printing of 300,000 copies, the largest of Crusie’s career. In 2007, their second novel, Agnes and the Hitman, was released and became a New York Times bestseller. They collaborated again in 2010 on Wild Ride. Crusie also worked with Eileen Dreyer and Anne Stuart on The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes (2007) and with Anne Stuart and Lani Diane Rich on Dogs and Goddesses (2009).

In 2010, Crusie published her first solo book in six years, Maybe This Time. This book is her version of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. In her version, the governess is not young or inexperienced, the children are not perfectly behaved, and the faraway guardian becomes part of the story.

In 2022, Crusie and Bob Mayer began writing together again, creating a three-book limited series. The first series, Lavender’s Blue, Rest in Pink, and One in Vermillion, was released in 2023. The second series, Rocky Start, Very Nice Funerals, and The Honey Pot Plot, was released in 2024 and early 2025.

Crusie continues to write about fiction academically. Early in her career, she published a book of literary criticism on Anne Rice under the name Jennifer Smith. She also writes about pop culture on her blog Argh Ink and for Benbella Press, editing three essay collections and contributing to others.

Awards and honors

• Jennifer Crusie received the Romance Writers of America 2005 RITA Award for her book Bet Me in the Best Contemporary Single Title category.
• She received the Romance Writers of America 1995 RITA Award for her book Getting Rid of Bradley in the Best Short Contemporary Series category.