Jennifer Crusie

Jennifer Crusie (born 1949) is a pseudonym for Jennifer Smith, an author of contemporary romance novels. She has written more than twenty novels, which have been published in 20 countries.

Biography Crusie was born as Jennifer Smith in Wapakoneta, Ohio to Jack and JoAnn Smith. She chose to honor her maternal grandmother by writing under her grandmother's maiden name, Crusie. Her second master's degree is an MFA in Fiction from Ohio State University.

Crusie's first career was a teacher, beginning with pre-school, then elementary and junior high art, high school English, and undergraduate college English courses, including 15 years in the Beavercreek, Ohio public school system. Her teaching subjects included art, literature, mythology, the Bible in literature, college composition, creative writing, and British and American literature, as well as time spent directing the sets and costumes crews for the high school's drama department. She quit her job in the summer of 1991 to devote herself full-time to writing. After a ten-year hiatus from publishing, Crusie began again in collaboration again with Bob Mayer, experimenting with self-publishing.

Crusie's books are known for their humor, although she says she has never "deliberately written to be funny. ... I think my characters just have a particular kind of sense of humor. They use it the way a lot of people do, to cope with the absurdities of life."

In September 2004, Crusie met adventure novelist Bob Mayer at the Maui Writers Conference. By the end of the conference, they had become friends and begun the outline for a novel. Within a year, they had finished the manuscript, collaborating primarily via email. In the novel, Don't Look Down, Crusie wrote the scenes and dialogue for the female protagonist, while Mayer wrote the scenes and dialogue for the male protagonist. Crusie's longtime editor, Jennifer Enderlin, also edited this book, and had to ask Crusie who had written each section as she couldn't tell them apart. The novel was given an initial printing of 300,000 copies, Crusie's highest initial printing to date. In August 2007, their second collaborative novel, Agnes and the Hitman, was released and made the New York Times best seller list. They again partnered up for March 2010's release of Wild Ride. Crusie has also collaborated with Eileen Dreyer and Anne Stuart on The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes (2007), and on Dogs and Goddesses (2009) with Anne Stuart and Lani Diane Rich. This is Crusie's version of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. In Crusie's version the governess is not young and inexperienced, the children are not perfectly behaved, they are not isolated because house guests keep turning up and moving in, and the faraway guardian turns up and becomes part of the story. Rest in Pink, and One in Vermillion - came out in 2023 and the second - Rocky Start, Very Nice Funerals, and The Honey Pot Plot - came out in 2024 and early 2025.

She also continues her interest in the academic side of fiction. Early in her academic career, she published a book of literary criticism on Anne Rice under the name Jennifer Smith; and she's been active in pop culture criticism, both on her blog Argh Ink and for Benbella Press, editing three essay collections and contributing to others..