Jennifer Oko

Jennifer Oko is a writer, journalist, and filmmaker. Her memoir Lying Together: My Russian Affair was an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times Book Review, which called it “simply riveting.” Her novel Gloss, a satire of morning television news, also received ample praise, with Marie Claire magazine comparing it to Carl Hiaasen’s Lucky You and The Chicago Tribune saying it was “a rare treat.” Gloss was optioned by eOne Entertainment to be developed as a television series. Her novel Head Case is a comic mystery about psycho-pharmaceutical trafficking, which she swears is not autobiographical in any way.

Jennifer’s latest novel, Just Emilia, is a time-traveling dark comedy about three women who are trapped in a Washington, DC Metro elevator, only to discover that they are the same person, many decades apart. In order to find her way out, she has to confront the truth about how a childhood tragedy is impacting her at these different stages of her life.

And speaking of life stages, Jennifer lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, two almost-adult children, a middle-aged dog, and a young cat. In addition to her creative writing, she has spent more than two decades producing television news features and feature-length documentary films. She recently finished production on projects for Netflix and HBO.