Jeanine Cummins is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of American Dirt, whose novels have been an Oprah Book Club pick, a Barnes & Noble Book Club selection, as well as a #1 Indie Next pick. Her work has been translated into dozens of languages and sold millions of copies worldwide.
In her 2020 novel, American Dirt, Jeanine conducted extensive research into the origin stories of migrants and refugees who attempt to get to the US via the southern border with Mexico. Jeanine visited migrant shelters and orphanages in Mexico, met with humanitarian aid workers who provide water to migrants in the desert, interviewed lawyers who provide pro bono legal services for unaccompanied minors, and volunteered at a desayunador (soup kitchen) in Tijuana. Those experiences, among many others, were deeply influential in helping Jeanine understand why Mexican and Central American migrants are willing to undertake such a perilous journey, crossing Mexico atop the treacherous freight trains known as La Bestia, all in the hopes of reaching a hostile and closed foreign border. But Jeanine’s interest in global stories that explore themes of hardship, resilience, and survival did not begin with American Dirt.
Jeanine was born on a US Naval Base in Rota, Spain, and spent most of her childhood in Gaithersburg, Maryland. When she was sixteen, Jeanine’s family experienced a horrific violent crime: the double-homicide of her two cousins by four strangers. Her brother was the only surviving victim of the attack. The crime and the impact it had on her family became the subject of her bestselling 2004 memoir A Rip in Heaven.
After that publication, Jeanine began speaking publicly about victims’ rights, and specifically about her family’s experiences with the criminal justice system. Jeanine is a death penalty opponent and can speak to the ways death row further persecutes victims of violent crime. She has addressed college, high school, and middle school students about topics from writing, to victimology, to turning trauma into art. She’s spoken to first responders about best practices when dealing with victims of violent crime and trauma. She has also spoken with incarcerated people about using art or stories as a way to take ownership over trauma, as well as poignant questions of forgiveness and redemption.
Her most recent work, Speak to Me of Home (2025) draws Cummins back to San Juan, Puerto Rico, tracing three generations of women—Rafaela, her daughter Ruth, and granddaughter Daisy—across decades of migration between Puerto Rico and the American Midwest. When a 2023 hurricane leaves Daisy critically injured, her mother and grandmother return to the island where their story began, confronting the choices, secrets, and inherited ideas of belonging that have shaped their lives. A moving exploration of marriage, identity, and the meaning of home, this story, based on the generational reality of Jeanine’s own Irish-and-Puerto Rican-American family, invites audiences into a conversation about what we inherit from our mothers, what we let go of, and how far we’ll travel to find our way home.
Jeanine’s five books cover a broad range of topics, but it may be her experiences off the page that make her such a dynamic speaker. After the publication of American Dirt in 2020, Jeanine became an unwitting cultural lightning rod in a divisive national conversation around identity. Though the experience was painful at the time, being the subject of that controversy provided her with uncommon insight into this fraught and heated cultural moment. Jeanine maintains an intimate and unbreakable openness about that, and the other extraordinary circumstances of her life.
“I was a facilitator of a reading group for convicted felons, as part of their probation. Each group, we would read A Rip in Heaven and discuss it. We had Jeanine Cummins come to the court and spend a few days with us. To say that we were all changed forever is an understatement. Ms. Cummins gave presentations to both adult offenders and juvenile offenders. Both presentations were very emotional and, by the questions she was asked, were very insightful and taught us all about trauma and forgiveness. There were more than a few tears shed during those presentations. It was both uplifting and inspiring for everyone involved during those two short days and none of us will ever forget being a part of that wonderful experience.” — Linda Mowrer, Wayne County Court of Common Plea
