Welcome to my world
I’m Jennifer. My friends call me Jen. My readers know me as J.A. Nielsen. So formal! That’s how it works when you have a name like Jennifer Nielsen. There are a lot of us out there. Learn a few things that make me well….me in my bio below. But before you get too far, don’t forget to pre-order The Claiming. It’s my third baby and I can’t wait to introduce it to the world.
Read My Bio
Meet the Nielsens
Jamison, Jen, Scott & Paige
J.A. Nielsen is the author of the YA Fantasy, The Claiming, the first book in the Fractured Kingdoms Series, available everywhere books are sold starting January 25, 2023. She is also the winner of the 2020 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest for Young Adult literature.
J.A. Nielsen was surrounded by books as a child—in a family full of readers and educators, she learned to love reading to fit in. In elementary school, her dad presented her with a two-book required reading list: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien and The Once and Future King by T.H. White. After that, her family made recommendations, but more or less, got her a library card and gave her free range. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett was the first novel she simply had to read twice. She blames The Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald for her inability to go to sleep without reading.
She holds an M.Ed. and an M.A. in Counseling and has spent most of her professional life in education—as a librarian mental health therapist, teacher, and administrator. Though she now spends much of her time writing, she can still be found teaching art in classrooms, shelving library books, and occasionally, choreographing school musicals. In all of these endeavors, she is driven by stories.
Her own story has led her to live all over the world—including a tropical island and in the shadow of a crumbling Rhineland castle—but she has always considered the Pacific Northwest corner of the United States home. When not writing, she is most likely playing with her family in the forest, on the water, or in the mountains. She still cannot go to sleep without reading.
The Claiming is her first novel.