Jen Ferguson is a Michif/Métis Canadian writer, activist, and academic of young adult fiction.^[1] She is best known for her Governor General's Award-winning and William C. Morris Award-nominated debut novel The Summer of Bitter and Sweet.^[2]

Ferguson is of Michif/Métis and Canadian settler heritage and identifies as queer.^[1][3]

She considers herself an army brat and grew up moving around in Canada, spending a few years in Calgary, and then moving to Lloydminster, which she says was the first place where she witnessed anti-indigenous violence.^[4]

The first book she remembers reading is Caroline B. Cooney’s The Face on The Milk Carton.^[5]

Ferguson has a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of South Dakota.^[1][6] She teaches fiction writing at Coe College.^[6][7]

Her debut novel, The Summer of Bitter and Sweet, was published by Heartdrum in 2022.

The Summer of Bitter and Sweet won the Governor General's Award^[2] and received starred reviews from Booklist,^[8] BookPage,^[5] Kirkus Reviews,^[1] and School Library Journal.^[9] It was also a finalist for the 2023 William C. Morris Award,^[10] as well as a Stonewall Honor Book in Children’s and Young Adult Literature in 2023,^[11] and the 2022 Cybils’ Award for Young Adult Literature.^[12]

Her second novel, Those Pink Mountain Nights, is a sequel to her debut and was published by Heartdrum in 2023.^[3] It is about an indigenous teen working her first job at an Alberta pizza shop and coming of age.^[4] It explores the topic of missing and murdered indigenous women, mental health, and sexuality.^[4]

It was inspired by her experience working in a pizza shop in the Canadian prairie when she was 16, a screenplay about a pizza shop she wrote in her early 20s, and the "ongoing human rights crisis happening in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico".^[5]