What Mennonite Girls Are Good For
Forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press in November 2025
Read a cover reveal article in Electric Literature :
Exclusive Cover Reveal of “What Mennonite Girls Are Good For” by Jennifer Sears
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Selected Fiction and Non-Fiction
“A Visceral Scroll through the Smokelong Quarterly Barbie Catalog.” Smokelong Quarterly. 27 Nov. 2023. (An essay/review of dark Barbie stories .)
“Kissing Her Ellipses: Dreams and Narrative Texture in Nabokov’s “Ultima Thule Theme.” Nabokov Studies, vol. 17, 2020-2021, p. 85-95.
“Emerson’s Egypt.” North American Review. Vol. 306.3. Fall 2021. Print. Cited on “Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2021” in Best American Essays 2022.
“Pennies for Imagination, Wildflowers for Details.” Kenyon Review Online. The Kenyon Review, 14 Nov. 2019.
“What Mennonite Girls are Good For.” Witness: The Modern Writer as Witness. Vol. XXXII, No. 1. Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Spring 2019.
“Everything That’s Something Must Come from Chicago.” Hemingway Shorts, Vol. 3. The Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. May 2018.
“The Body Confesses.” Scoundrel Time. 3 April 2018. (Flash fiction)
“Foragers.” Electric Literature. Recommended Reading. Issue 248. Feb. 15, 2017. Introduction by series editor Lucie Shelly.
“Canticle for Gigi Sauvageau.” Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. Special issue: “Boundaries of Taste.” June 2015.
“Sleepers.” J Journal: New Writing on Justice. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. 8.1. Spring 2015.
“The Interrogator Recites a Love Song.” Witness: The Modern Writer as Witness. 28.1. Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. 2015. Print. (Story/Novel excerpt.) Cited on “Other Distinguished Stories of 2015” in Best American Short Stories, 2016.
“Sins and Symbols.” Fiction International: Phobia/Philia. #47. Ed. Harold Jaffe. San Diego State University, San Diego, California. November 2014.
“How to Be a Staircase.” Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood: New York City Stories. 2010.
Anthologies
Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with YiYun Li. A Public Space Books. 14 Sept. 2021. Print.
After taking part in a Twitter-based online book club reading of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, facilitated by A Public Space, a literary magazine and organization, and fiction writer Yiyun Li, my “tweets” were among those selected for this anthology of materials and essays from fellow readers and writers.
The Power and Prison of Gender. Electric Literature. May 9, 2018. (Kindle/ebook)
This anthology, a collection from Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, includes eleven stories and on poem on exploring “how bodies and sexuality both trap us and free us.” My short story “Foragers” is included with writing from contributors Roxane Gay, Juan Villoro, Morgan Parker, Maggie Shipstead, among others.
Lost and Found: Stories from New York. Vol. 2. Ed. Thomas Beller. New York: Open City Press. 2009.
The anthology includes my essay “Players,” originally published on the Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood. Among the contributors are Edmund White, Phillip Lopate, Said Sayrafiezadeh, Rachel Sherman, and others.
Jennifer Sears 