My Books

Available wherever you like to purchase or borrow books. If you’d like to support my indie bookstore, you can order from Read Between The Lynes.

Body Talk: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy

It’s time to bare it all about bodies!

We all experience the world in a body, but we don’t usually take the time to explore what it really means to have and live within one. Just as every person has a unique personality, every person has a unique body, and every body tells its own story.

In Body Talk, thirty-seven writers, models, actors, musicians, and artists share essays, lists, comics, and illustrations—about everything from size and shape to scoliosis, from eating disorders to cancer, from sexuality and gender identity to the use of makeup as armor. Together, they contribute a broad variety of perspectives on what it’s like to live in their particular, unique bodies—and how their bodies have helped to inform who they are and how they move through the world.

Come on in, turn the pages, and join the celebration of our unique, diverse, miraculous, beautiful bodies!

(Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy

A Washington Post Best Book of 2018 and Schneider Family Book Award Honor Winner.

(Don’t) Call Me Crazy is a conversation starter and guide to better understanding the ways our mental health affects us every day. A diverse range of essays, art, and other creative work explore personal experiences with mental illness, how we do and do not talk about mental health, help for better understanding how every person’s brain is wired differently, and what, exactly, might make someone “crazy.” This highly designed, scrapbook-like guide provides an opportunity to get up close and personal with mental health.

Let’s get talking.

Here We Are: 44 Voices Write, Draw, and Speak About Feminism for the Real World

A School Library Journal “best book” of 2017.

A Chicago Public Library “best book” of 2017.

Let’s get the feminist party started!

Here We Are is a scrapbook-style teen guide to understanding what it really means to be a feminist. It’s packed with essays, lists, poems, comics, and illustrations from a diverse range of voices, including TV, film, and pop-culture celebrities and public figures such as ballet dancer Michaela DePrince and her sister Mia, politician Wendy Davis, as well as popular YA authors like Nova Ren Suma, Malinda Lo, Brandy Colbert, Courtney Summers, and many more. Altogether, the book features more than forty-four pieces, with an eight-page insert of full-color illustrations.

Here We Are is a response to lively discussions about the true meaning of feminism on social media and across popular culture and is an invitation to one of the most important, life-changing, and exciting parties around.

Praise:

“A progressive antidote to the ancient teen health textbooks that mull over the dry basics of teen identity . . . a stellar collection  . . . An embarrassment of riches.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Earnest, conversational, and dauntlessly unapologetic . . . An education unto itself, the message of inclusion and strength is invaluable.”
—Booklist, starred review

“Sophisticated yet entirely accessible, the collection is valuable both for the breadth of thought and perspective it represents and for the support it directs toward readers.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Here We Are not only presents an inclusive and hopeful vision for the future of feminism, it also boldly and proudly passes the torch to the next generation of leaders.”
—Teen Vogue

“Jensen has assembled a collection of meditations on what it means to be a woman today that is both important and gripping . . . HERE WE ARE is a book every feminist will want to get for the teen in their life—and will end up reading and learning from, too.”
—Bust

“[A] feminist power tome.”
—New York Magazine/The Strategist

“[Jensen’s] strength is on full display in this dynamic collection of essays, interviews, comic strips and more, which brings together a chorus of diverse viewpoints, from women and men, to help teens understand, broaden and visualize their own definition of contemporary feminism.”
—Chicago Tribune

Books I’ve had work included in

What I Do To Get Through: How To Run, Swim, Cycle, Sew, or Sing Your Way Through Depression edited by Olivia Sagan and James Whitley (February 2021)

When mental illness strikes, we need tools at our side to help make things better, that give meaning, relief and dare we say…happiness. From wild swimming and mindful running, to community singing and everyday yoga, the inspiring stories in this book reveal the power of activities and hobbies to distract, exorcise and calm, helping us to heal and recover from depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses.

From the team behind the bestselling The Recovery Letters, this honest, uplifting and motivational book will help you to discover the activity or hobby that will transform your life and make every day that much brighter.

The V-Word: True Stories About First-Time Sex, edited by Amber Keyser (January 2016)

An honest and poignant collection of essays by women about losing their virginity in their teens. The V-Word captures the complexity of this important life-decision and reflects diverse real-world experiences. Includes helpful resources for parents and teens.

Books I’ve Blurbed

Curious about the types of books I like to read and champion? Here are the books I have lended my praise to as blurbs.

The Fall of Whit Rivera by Crystal Maldonado (Oct 2023)

“Fall lovers unite! This sweetly romantic story of all things autumn, friendship, family, and culture is nothing short of a literary pumpkin spice latte: satisfying and delightful. Whit is your classic Type A, learning how to both lean into her passions while letting go of her need for perfection. Whit’s story of life with the chronic illness of PCOS–common and underresearched–will resonate with so many readers who feel the challenges of acting “normal” but knowing that could shift at any minute. Maldonado shines in this story of a proud fat queer Brown girl letting herself love and be loved for the whole of who she is.”

Tell Me My Name by Amy Reed

“This twisty, near-future, feminist take on The Great Gatsby is a relentlessly compelling exploration of girls, power, and reclamation. Chilling and timely, Reed’s latest is a literary thrill ride.”

Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus

“This is going to blow a lot of readers’ brains. It is part alien story, part story about conspiracy theories, part story about the power of the media, part story about growing up without much in rural Iowa, and part story about family. It’s by turns heartening and heartbreaking, and it’s a story featuring a main character who is unlikable and angry and violent…and also one full of compassion, discovering a moral compass, and wrestling with unbelievable grief and frustration, taking it out through the only means she can.

Smart, complex, and exceptionally timely, Kraus’s part-horror, part-science fiction, wholly human story is engaging, enraging, and an absolute winner. I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time, and I can’t wait to revisit it and see exactly how he wove everything together in such a compelling and savvy way.”

The Girl in the Show by Anna Fields

“A nuanced, thoughtful exploration of funny women past and present who rewrote the rules of what it means to be “the girl in the show.” Banks offers deft insight into the history of women in comedy and the subtle and not-so-subtle ways Lucille Ball, Gilda Radner, and other brave ladies made space on the stage for Tina Fey, Lindy West, Sara Benincasa, and more of today’s comedienne-ballerinas. This book doesn’t rest on that work, though; it’s a wakeup call for how much work is still necessary to dismantle the patriarchy both in comedy and in the broader cultural landscape. An excellent addition to feminist bookshelves everywhere.”