Chilbury Ladies' Choir (Ryan) - Author Bio

Author Bio
Jennifer Ryan is a novelist and nonfiction editor. Her debut novel, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir was released in 2017.

Ryan, was born in a small village in Kent in the UK, which afforded her a near idyllic childhood. As she writes on her website, those early years were spent…

gallivanting around the countryside, often on bikes, climbing tress...and eating cheese and tomato rolls in red telephone boxes to shelter from the rain.

She writes of the scent of lavender and roses and freshly mown grass, memories that permeate settings for her stories.

Ryan attended college, and afterward became an editor for nonfiction books in London. As she gained more experience editing and writing, she eventually found the courage to try fiction. Once she married and took off time to have children, she was able to carve out time to develop her first novel, The Chilbury Ladies' Choir.

That novel is based on stories from her grandmother, who was 20 when World War II began. She recalls bumping into people during the blackouts, singing in air raid shelters, and the relishing the freedom many women felt with the men absent in the war. And, of course, her grandmother belonged to a choir.

Ryan has moved to the Washington, DC, area with her husband and children. (Adapted from the author's website.)