Jennifer Senior

Jennifer Senior is a staff writer at The Atlantic and winner of the 2022 Pulitzer for Feature Writing. Prior to joining the Atlantic, she spent five years at The New York Times—first as one of its three daily book critics, then as a columnist for the Opinion page. Before that, she spent eighteen years as a staff writer for New York Magazine, writing profiles and cover stories about politics, social science, and mental health.

Senior’s newest book, On Grief: Love, Loss, Memory (2023), is an Atlantic Edition, a line of books featuring long-form journalism by Atlantic writers, drawn from contemporary articles or classic storytelling from the magazine’s 165-year archive. On Grief is Senior’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning essay about the family of Bobby McIlvaine, who died in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Senior’s first book, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, spent eight weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and was named one of Slate’s Top 10 Books of 2014.

In addition to the Pulitzer, Senior has won a variety of journalism prizes, including a National Magazine award, a GLAAD award, two Front Page Awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York, and the Erikson Prize in Mental Health Media. Her work has been anthologized four times in The Best American Political Writing, and her profile of the psychologist Philip Brickman was selected for The Best American Science Writing of 2021. All Joy and No Fun has been translated into twelve languages.

Senior has been a frequent guest on NPR and numerous television programs, including The Chris Matthews Show, Morning Joe, Washington Journal with Brian Lamb, Anderson Cooper 360, Good Morning America, and Today. She has also been a speaker at TED’s annual conference and the Sydney Opera House. FAN hosted Senior in 2014.