Member Profile

Jennifer Cook was born and educated in England and came over to Canada with her husband and daughter in 1967. During her children's school years the family was constantly on the move living in Laos, Iran, the United Kingdom, South Africa and South America - all backgrounds for Jennifer's young adult novels. Although now firmly rooted in Ottawa, Ontario, Jennifer continues to travel widely for research and to hold student workshops on writing, her books and Canada. Her spirit of adventure is still very strong and she is always interested in visiting students anywhere in the world.

Jennifer's young adult novel, Daughters, Mothers and Grandmothers, was launched in December 2012 in Ottawa.  It is an African story about the courage of two teenage friends, one Canadian and the other South African, and their families during the AIDS pandemic.  Part of the proceeds go to the Stephen Lewis Foundation's Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign to assist African grandmothers and their orphaned grandchildren in Sub-Saharan Africa.  The story is based on Jennifer's family's experiences living on the edge of the Kalahari Desert and the stories she heard from the African grandmothers when she attended a gathering of 500 African grandmothers in Swaziland 2010 with the Stephen Lewis Foundation and 41 other Canadian grandmothers.

Jennifer travelled to Guinea Conakry, West Africa, in 2016 to open a French library in Donghol Touma named La Bibliotheque Communale Jennifer Baniczky Cook.  A great honour.

In 2017 Jennifer's picture book Amazon Jungle Adventure was launched at Books on Beechwood in Ottawa with her grandsons to whom the book is dedicated.