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Jennifer Acker is a writer, editor, and translator. She is the author of the novel The Limits of the World, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, and the essay-length memoir "Fatigue." Acker's second novel, Surrender (Delphinium Books, April 14, 2026), is about a woman who retreats from academic life in New York City to manage a family goat farm in New England. In the other half of her literary life, Acker is editor-in-chief of the Common and directs LitFest at Amherst College. She lives in Western Massachusetts and Portland, Maine.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
Midlife crisis / queer goat famer / love story
On your nightstand now:
I direct a literary festival at Amherst College and so all the guest authors' books are on my nightstand! To name a few: the essay collection Putting Myself Together by Jamaica Kincaid (I'll be interviewing her on stage); Wanting by Claire Jia, an exquisite and intricately plotted novel about how several residents of Beijing navigate their complex relationships with America, and one another; The Unbroken Coast by Nalini Jones, a beautiful, in-depth and intertwined story of two families living in a suburb of Mumbai, one well-off and one less so; and Bernie for Burlington by Dan Chiasson, a reflection on the rise and staying power of the influential Bernie Sanders, by a native son of Vermont. All of these terrific books are tangibly steeped in specific places, always a hook for me as the editor of a place-based literary journal.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Published in 1897, Prince Uno is not a classic. Or, if it was once well known, it's now obscure. No one I know has even heard of it, and the Internet turns up barely more than an image of the frontispiece from the Library of Congress. (If any readers know this book, let's hear from you!) My grandmother used to read it to me because her mother read it to her. Their names are inscribed in my inherited copy.
The author, known only as Uncle Frank (no last name), writes in the introduction that he composed this tale for a dangerously ill nephew: "In order that he might endure the extreme suffering caused by the medical treatment, it was necessary that his mind should be diverted from his sufferings on that day. Before the sun should set he would be either convalescent or past help."
Uncle Frank spins a magical story of his visit with the beneficent Prince Uno and Princess Ino in Fairyland. Together they find their royal son, who has been captured by evil wood sprites.
Your top five authors:
Shirley Hazzard
Mavis Gallant
Marilynne Robinson
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Katie Kitamura
Book you've faked reading:
Until getting my MFA at age 30, I'd somehow escaped reading William Shakespeare (except Romeo and Juliet in high school) and would just nod along when anyone mentioned King Lear (now my favorite play).
Also, Thomas Mann. I read half of The Magic Mountain and then just... stopped. I was enjoying it, I can't say why I put it down, but I've never gone back to finish it.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard. I don't think any novel has captured me on both an emotional level and at the level of language that this novel has. Every line is exquisite, and it's a devastating love story. My husband and I read it aloud together during the pandemic. It was my third time through, and still I relished so many new insights and details and plots twists.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Flesh by David Szalay, though I haven't read it yet!
Since I'm deep into Jamaica Kincaid's oeuvre at the moment, I have to shout out the design of her older books reissued by Picador. Each cover features a drawing by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, a British writer and painter. The drawings are portraits of fictional people, Black men and women, based on found images and the artist's imagination. The font is not named but looks like calligraphy from the time of writing with quill pens. I find these covers very striking and compelling.
Book you hid from your parents:
My parents never frowned on anything that I read. I don't know if that's because I wasn't terribly adventurous or if they didn't care to censor.
I was forbidden from watching certain TV shows, though, if they were violent or "too stupid." (This included cartoons!) I used to sneak watching Three's Company, and once my dad caught me. I was supposed to be helping him transplant tomatoes, and instead I was guffawing at Jack Tripper escaping the clutches of the randy Mrs. Roper. I got a good scolding for that!
Book that changed your life:
Not every book is memorable, but every book teaches me something as a reader or a writer, even if it's, Wow, I hated that character!
Favorite line from a book:
"Many had died. But not she, not he; not yet."
This is the last line of The Great Fire, another masterpiece by Shirley Hazzard. The book's love story is autobiographical, based on a relationship Hazzard had with an older man she met in Hong Kong when she was 17. (Hazzard had gone to Hong Kong with her family from Australia.) Her own romance ended "tragically," in her words, but Hazzard wanted the characters of the novel to have a fighting chance.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Oh, probably something overtly romantic with a deeply rooted sense of place like The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough, which is set in the Australian Outback in the first half of the 20th century. I think I read this tale of forbidden love in middle school and haven't gone back to it since. I have no idea what I'd think of it now, but I remember the drama keeping me awake at night back then!