Jennie Fields

Jennie Fields (born July 25, 1953) is an American novelist. Her fourth novel is The Age of Desire, based on the life of American writer Edith Wharton.

Jennie Fields
Fields reading at The Mount
Born (1953-07-25) July 25, 1953
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
OccupationNovelist
NationalityAmerican
GenreFiction
Notable worksThe Age of Desire (2012)
Website
www.jenniefields.com

Early life

Fields was born in Chicago, Illinois and was raised in Highland Park, Illinois.

Fields earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in creative writing and painting from The University of Illinois and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.[1][2] Fields had a successful career in advertising, starting as a copywriter in Chicago, and going on to become a creative director at several international advertising agencies in Chicago and New York.[3] Her advertising credits include McDonald's jingles (while at DDB Needham), including "Menu Chant", which was sung by, among others, Carl Giammarese of The Buckinghams,[4] the "We're All Connected" campaign[5][6] for New York Telephone (while at Young & Rubicam), and the Lunesta Moth campaign (while at McCann Erickson) for which she won an Effie award.[7]

Fields now lives in Nashville, TN, where she is a full-time writer.[8]

Novels

Fields has published five novels: Lily Beach, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, The Middle Ages, The Age of Desire, and Atomic Love . Her first novel Lily Beach (Grand Central Publishing 1997), is the story of a young artist in the 1960s, struggling to find her place in a rapidly changing world. Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, (Harper Collins 1997) is the story of six people who live on the same street in Brooklyn, and what happens to them over the course of a year. Her third novel, The Middle Ages (Harper Collins 2002) tells the story of an architect who only finds the life she's really seeking when she loses her job. Her fifth novel, Atomic Love (Penguin Random House 2020) is set in Chicago in the 1950s and tells the story of a female physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and who must decide whether to help the FBI by spying on a former colleague - and lover - who the FBI suspects of passing nuclear secrets to Russia.[9]

The Age of Desire

In 2012, Fields published The Age of Desire (Penguin Group, 2012) based on the life of American author Edith Wharton. The novel centers on Wharton's illicit affair with journalist William Morton Fullerton and that affair's effect on both her unstable husband, Edward R. "Teddy" Wharton, and her close friendship with her lifelong friend and confidant, her literary secretary Anna Bahlmann. Until recently, little had been known about Bahlmann but Fields was one of the first[10] to have access to over 100 previously unknown letters from Wharton to Bahlmann[11] that were auctioned in 2009. The letters are now in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University[12] and form the basis of another 2012 publication, "My Dear Governess: The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann" by Irene Goldman-Price.

Fields' books have been published in Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Bibliography
  • Lily Beach (1993)
  • Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (1997)
  • The Middle Ages (2002)
  • The Age of Desire (2012)
  • Atomic Love (2020)

References
  1. Chicago Tribune Interview http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-06-13/features/9306130401_1_garp-jennie-heroine
  2. Iowa Writers' Workshop Alums Website http://wewantedtobewriters.com/ Archived 2018-10-28 at the Wayback Machine
  3. Chicago Tribune Interview http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-06-13/features/9306130401_1_garp-jennie-heroine
  4. The Buckinghams Website http://www.thebuckinghams.com/interview.html
  5. The Paley Center http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=telephone+%22new+york%22&p=1&item=AT:28986.030
  6. New York Telephone Commercial with comment by Ms. Fields https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxjPjw04DF4
  7. The Effie Awards 2006 http://www.effie.org/winners/showcase/2006/590 Archived 2010-09-20 at the Wayback Machine
  8. Nashville Arts Interview http://nashvillearts.com/2010/04/23/jennie-fields-the-age-of-ecstasy/
  9. Publishers Weekly: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-593-08533-2
  10. Nashville Arts Interview http://nashvillearts.com/2010/04/23/jennie-fields-the-age-of-ecstasy/
  11. The New Yorker: Edith Wharton's Lost Letters: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/29/090629fa_fact_mead
  12. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/HLTransformer/HLTransServlet?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=beinecke:bahlmann&clear-stylesheet-cache=yes
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