Novel Dickinsonia

Holm and husband Jonathan Hamel have collaborated on a new baby as well as a book.

Prodigious Producer
Jennifer Holm ’90 keeps the printing press humming with a book a year.

When last we checked in with Jennifer Holm ’90, she was enjoying the accolades attendant with publishing a Newberry Award-winning book. This was early 2000, and Holm was on campus to read from that first book of hers, Our Only May Amelia. Since then she’s published two books in her Boston Janes series, with the third and final installment due out in February.

Prolific in output, she also saw publication in June of The Creek, her first book for a somewhat older reading audience (Amelia was for third-to-fifth-graders and Boston Jane for grade five and up). The Creek, aimed at young-adult readers, also is her first novel with a contemporary—rather than historical—setting.

“It’s about what happens in a suburban neighborhood over the summer when a juvenile delinquent comes home [from incarceration],” Holm explains. “Kids start getting hurt, fires get started. It’s really a coming-of-age thriller.”

Of all her books, the heroine in this one is most like Holm, who grew up as the only girl among five children in Audubon, Pa. “She’s a spunky young girl. The story is ripped from my childhood.”

Now that she’s tackled an older market, she’s going after a younger one in a new HarperCollins series she’s developing with her husband, Jonathan Hamel. The Stink Files, a series of chapter books aimed at boys in grades two and up, concerns a cat, James Edward Bristlefur, who is a British spy. That she and Jonathan should aim their series at little boys is no surprise, since the two also co-produced Will Aaron Hamel, born on Aug. 22.

Though motherhood is new, some things remain the same as when Holm was featured three years ago in this magazine. She still consults her mentor, Professor Emeritus of Religion Ralph Slotten. “I send him just about everything I write.”

She’s back living in New York City after a brief departure due to post-9/11 shock. Her husband could have been a casualty had he arrived at work on time. And the couple mourned the death in the World Trade Center of their best friend, whose funeral they arranged.

Shortly after winning the Newberry she left her job producing TV commercials to write full time. Besides writing she enjoys other authors’ works.

“I read everything—nonfiction, mysteries, children’s books, horrible romance novels,” she claims. “I’m an Alice Hoffman fan. She’s like comfort food—a great chick writer. Her books are always about middle-aged women who’ve lost their way and find their way again.”

Holm also relishes the success of other Dickinson novelists, like classmate Jennifer Wasilko Haigh ’90, author of Mrs. Kimble (see page 20). During their campus days, “I was more scared of writing, and she was more confident. She always wanted to be a writer. I was interested in international studies, which was my major.”

The writing bug may have bit Holm later, but it did so in a big way, as her publication of four books in four years will attest.

—Sherri Kimmel

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