Jennifer Percy

Jennifer Percy
Born	Oregon
Education	Iowa Writers' Workshop
Occupation	Writer
Relatives	Benjamin Percy (brother)
Website	www.jenpercy.com

Jennifer Percy is an American writer. Her work has been published in The New York Times , Harper's , ^[1] and The New Republic . ^{[2] [3]}

Career

Jen Percy is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she received a Truman Capote Fellowship in fiction. ^[4] She also received an Iowa Arts Fellowship from Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program. She won of a Pushcart Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, ^[5] and MacDowell Foundation. ^[6]

Her work has appeared in a number of magazines, including Harper’s, The New Republic, and The Oxford American. She has taught writing at New York University and Columbia University.

Percy's first book, Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism, was published in 2014 by Simon and Schuster and was reviewed by the New York Times . ^[7]

The book focuses on post-traumatic stress disorder and what it means to be haunted by trauma. Percy drew inspiration from a newspaper article the suicide of a man haunted by an Iraqi soldier he’d killed, talking to his ghost every night. She too became almost haunted by bats which were seemingly following her. One morning, she found a cereal bowl with a dead bat in the milk. ^[8]

Awards and honors

In 2012, Percy received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. ^[9] In 2013, she won a Pushcart Prize. ^[10]

In 2017, she won the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. ^[11]

In 2020, she was honored with a Dart Center award. ^[12]

Works

• Demon Camp. Simon and Schuster. February 10, 2015. ISBN   978-1-4516-6206-1. ^[13]
• Girls Play Dead. New York, NY: Doubleday. November 11, 2025. ISBN   978-0-385-55004-8. ^{[14] [15] [16]}

Personal life

Jen's brother is writer Benjamin Percy.

References

1. "Jennifer Percy Archives". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved January 16, 2026.
2. "Meet the American Vigilantes who are Fighting ISIS". The New York Times . Retrieved September 30, 2015.
3. "Bio". Jenpercy.com. Retrieved September 30, 2015.
4. https://english.uiowa.edu/people/jen-percy
5. "Jennifer Percy". www.arts.gov. Retrieved January 16, 2026.
6. https://www.macdowell.org/news/the-art-of-journalism-as-practiced-by-writer-jennifer-percy
7. "Demon Camp by Jennifer Percy : Review". The New York Times . Retrieved September 30, 2015.
8. "An Interview with Ben and Jen Percy".
9. "Jennifer Percy". Arts.gov. Retrieved September 30, 2015.
10. "2013 Pushcart Prize Anthology". benjaminpercy.com. Retrieved September 30, 2015.
11. "Articles by Jennifer Percy | Smithsonian Magazine". www.smithsonianmag.com. Retrieved June 9, 2021.
12. "Dart Center For Journalism & Trauma".
13. "Interview with Jen Percy". the interlochen review. Retrieved January 16, 2026.
14. Bennett, Jessica (November 30, 2025). "Book Review: 'Girls Play Dead,' by Jen Percy". The New York Times. Retrieved January 16, 2026.
15. Delijani, Sahar (December 2, 2025). "Jen Percy by Dina Nayeri". BOMB Magazine. Retrieved January 16, 2026.
16. Gilbert, Sophie (December 22, 2025). "Everything We Know About Rape Is Wrong". The Atlantic. Retrieved January 16, 2026.