About Jenney Egertson

Silver medal winner of a 2019 Independent Publisher Book Award.

As an English teacher at a St. Louis alternative high school in the 1980s; as a freelance writer and later as a corporate executive in the 1990s; and ever since then, as I’ve worked myself in and out of several corporate communications jobs, with happy periods in between as a freelance communications strategist, writer/editor, and meeting facilitator.

I began writing Before I Leave—my first and only book to date—in 2000, after meeting an 80-year-old woman I couldn’t forget. For the next 18 years I interviewed, came to love, and wrote about a total of six women, all over the age of eighty at the time I met them, and most in their mid-to late nineties by the time they died. My final subject—my mother, Edith—still lives with my dad in St. Louis, Missouri.

I’ve lived in Minneapolis for the last thirty-two years. These days, I divide my time between writing about the topics I explored with the women I interviewed for Before I Leave, working with a few fabulous clients, traveling with my handsome partner, caring for my beloved greyhound and an adorable chihuahua, traveling both domestically and abroad when I can, and fishing—either alone at a city lake or with anyone who will take me to a new and different lake or river or stream.  I also set aside time every day for my favorite pastimes—spending time with my daughter, Rowan, and reading.