Jennifer Dinn Korman

In the late eighties and nineties I was an investment banker at a large Wall Street firm. While my colleagues had their own secrets, mine was an addiction to the transcendent experience of writing, and the transformative power of words. I used to schedule my frequent business travel around writing workshops at The New School, sometimes flying round-trip to Denmark in 24 hours to make it back for a class. I would write on legal pads in every spare moment and hide literature inside business magazines as I travelled.

In 1997, I met my physician husband, and he rescued me from this dual life. I quit my Wall Street job and we moved to the antithesis of New York City, the Outback town of Mt. Isa, Queensland. In my long quiet hours in this mining town, I wrote a novel set in New York (Going Platinum, soon to be published by Robbers Nest Press). From that vast distance I could let my imagination wander and capture the essence of the city that I so missed.

Then, through my husband’s patients, I found a tie to the indigenous people of Australia and saw the real life results of mystical Aboriginal healing and the power of faith. I saw how a change of surroundings can reshape a person and found inspiration for Waltzing Jimmy Jackboy.

After travelling around the world, we settled in Colorado, where the sun and mountains provide us and our three children ample opportunity to explore our relationship with the land. I now write in the open, and indulge in my not-so-secret hobby of providing corporate strategic advice.