Jac Jemc

Jac Jemc is the author of five books of fiction: Empty Theatre (2023), False Bingo (2019), The Grip of It (2017), A Different Bed Every Time (2014), and My Only Wife (2012). She was a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and has completed residencies in the Arctic Circle, and at the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Hald: The Danish Center for Writers and Translators, Ragdale, the Vermont Studio Center, Thicket, Moulin à Nef, Dorland Mountain Arts, A-Z West, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her fiction has been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition and Selected Shorts. Jemc’s work has won the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction and the Paula Anderson Book Award, and been a finalist for the PEN Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, California Book Award, and Lambda Literary Award. Jemc received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research and teaching interests include horror, speculative fiction, historical fiction, fragmented narrative, sentence-level stylistics, humor and screenwriting. Professor Jemc serves as the Faculty Director of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop.

Pronouns: she/her

Languages: English

Books

• Empty Theatre (MCD x FSG, 2023) [Finalist for the California Book Award] LINK
• False Bingo (FSG Originals, 2019) [Winner of the Chicago Review of Books Fiction Prize, Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Speculative Fiction and Longlisted for the Story Prize] LINK
• The Grip of It (FSG Originals, 2017) [Finalist of the Chicago Review of Books Fiction Prize and Finalist for the Goodreads Readers' Choice Award in Horror] LINK
• A Different Bed Every Time (DZANC Books, 2014) LINK
• My Only Wife (DZANC Books, 2012) [Winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award and Finalist for the PEN Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction] LINK

• M.F.A. in Writing, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2008
• B.F.A. in Theatre Arts and BA in English - Creative Writing, Illinois Wesleyan University, 2005