Hi! I’m Jenny Skoog Mondesir
People are my thing. I’m the youngest of nine and a true extrovert. I get my energy from the people around me. It’s why I moved to New York in my twenties, and why I became a personal trainer.
New York Emmy Nomination | MA Biography & Memoir, CUNY | Producer, BIO Podcast | Featured on NPR
My dad taught me to love a good story.
He was a quiet man with a lifelong speech impediment, and in public my mom often spoke for him. But at home, with my ear pressed against his rattling chest, he told stories in his gruff voice and I was rapt. I’ve never been to his childhood home, but I know what it smelled and sounded like. I can still hear the scream of the murdered woman down the road from their house while Grandpa was away at the sanatorium in the 1930s.
That’s why I love memoir. It’s a window into someone’s soul.
I studied English and Black Studies at City College, then earned my MA in Biography and Memoir at the CUNY Graduate Center. These days I produce BIO Podcast for Biographers International Organization, where I interview biographers about the lives they write. I’m writing a memoir about my year in Tulsa, developing a video podcast, and working as a developmental editor.
I pay my bills as a personal trainer at Skoogfit and live in Jersey City with my husband and our dog.