Jennifer Baumgardner

Jennifer Baumgardner is the Lucille Geier Lakes writer-in-residence at Smith College (2024-2027), a position endowed by Congresswoman Jane Harman (Smith, ’66). Originally from the Midwest (raised in Fargo, North Dakota; college in Wisconsin), Baumgardner is a New York City-based writer, producer, professor, and publisher. She has written features for Glamour, Teen Vogue, Bust, Dissent, Harper’s Bazaar, Harper’s, The Nation, Elle, New York Times, and N+1, among many other publications. Her books include Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future, Grassroots, Look Both Ways (all Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and Abortion & Life (Akashic).

Baumgardner has made two feature-length documentaries, It Was Rape and I Had an Abortion, both distributed by Women Make Movies. As a theater producer, she co-produced the national tours of the SLUT: The Play and Now That We’re Men. 

In higher ed, Baumgardner has keynoted at more than 250 colleges and universities, taught writing workshops at The New School (2008-2012), served as editor-in-chief of the Women’s Review of Books at Wellesley, and as executive director of the Feminist Press at CUNY (2013–2017), where she established the award-winning queer imprint Amethyst Editions with Michelle Tea and the Louise Meriwether prize for a debut author of color. 

In 2018, she founded the award-winning imprint Dottir Press, which “takes a feminist approach to publishing and artistic production, working to fill the absences in both our history and present culture through storytelling in all forms and for all ages.” She edits the print journal LIBER: A Feminist Review and is currently developing Katie Cappiello’s satirical play The Body of Mary for a commercial run and is working on a new book about women’s lives and labor.