Small Fry (Brennan-Jobs) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth— May 17, 1978
• Where—Portland, Oregon, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York


Lisa Nicole Brennan-Jobs is the daughter of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and artist Chrisann Brennan. She has worked as a journalist and magazine writer and, in 2018, published her memoir, Small Fry, the story of her childhood and coming-of-age in Silicon Valley in the 1970s and 80s.

Brennan-Jobs has been depicted in a number of films and biographies of Steve Jobs, including three biopics—Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999, made for TV), Jobs (2013, with Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs ), and Steve Jobs (2015, based on Walter Isaacson's bestselling biography). A major character in her aunt Mona Simpson's novel A Regular Guy (1998) is based on her.

Birth and the Apple Lisa
Brennan-Jobs was born in 1978 on Robert Friedland's All One Farm commune outside of Portland, Oregon. Her mother, Chrisann Brennan, and her father, Steve Jobs, first met in high school in 1972 and had an on-off relationship for the next five years.

In 1977, after Jobs had co-founded Apple Inc., he and Brennan moved into a house with a friend near the company's office in Cupertino, California, where they all worked. It was during this period that Brennan became pregnant with Lisa.

Jobs, however, denied responsibility for the pregnancy, and Brennan ended the relationship, walking out of their shared home. She supported herself by cleaning houses and later moved to the Portland commune where Lisa was born: Jobs was not present at the birth.

Robert Friedland, the farm's owner and a friend of Jobs' from Reed College, called Jobs, persuading him to drive up to see the baby, and three days later Jobs appeared. Brennan and Jobs chose the name Lisa.

Jobs also named the computer project he was working on—the Apple Lisa—for his new daughter. Shortly after, however, he denied paternity, claiming the name "Apple Lisa" was devised by his team—as an acronym for "Local Integrated Systems Architecture." (It wasn't until decades later that Jobs admitted the computer was "obviously" named for his daughter.")

Paternity
Jobs continued to deny he was Lisa's father—even after a DNA test established his paternity within a 94% probability. Nonetheless, the resolution of a legal case required him to provide Brennan with $385 per month and to reimburse the state for the money she had received from welfare.

After Apple went public and Jobs became a multimillionaire, he increased the payment to $500 a month.

When Lisa was nine, Jobs acknowledged his fatherhood and worked at reconciliation, legally altering Lisa's birth certificate—at her request—from Brennan to Brennan-Jobs. Crissan Brennan credits the change in Jobs to author Mona Simpson, Jobs' newly found biological sister, who worked to repair the relationship between father and daughter.

According to Fortune magazine, Jobs left Lisa a multimillion-dollar inheritance.

Education and career
Brennan-Jobs lived with her mother until sometime in high school; then she moved in with her father, attending Palo Alto High. She received her B.A. from Harvard University, where she wrote for the Harvard Crimson. After graduation in 2000, Brennan-Jobs worked in finance in the UK (she had spent a year abroad studying at King's College-London) and Italy; she later shifted to design.

Eventually, Brennan-Jobs turned to writing and moved to New York, where she freelanced for magazines and literary journals. She has written for Southwest Review, Massachusetts Review, Harvard Advocate, Spiked, Vogue, and Oprah Magazine.

In 2018, Brennan-Jobs published her memoir, Small Fry, to positive reviews, including the New York Times Book Review, which called her a "deeply gifted writer." The book details her childhood and complex, often difficult, relationship with her father.

Personal life
Brennan-Jobs resides in Brooklyn, New York City, with her husband, their son, and her two stepdaughters. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/18/2018.)