New York Times : Updates From The Book Review

Some exciting staff news for the Book Review, including a new editor

We're excited to announce that Jennifer Harlan will join the Book Review as a senior staff editor, focused on our service journalism. In this position - a new one for the department - Jen will help our readers solve that all-important problem: what to read next. With that charge in mind, she will expand some of our already existing service efforts while also launching new story formats and series across our many platforms.

Jen joins us from the Projects and Initiatives desk, where she has spent the last five years working on stories that have surprised and delighted our readers, such as an exploration of Asian languages onscreen, a deep dive into the cultural legacy of the Spice Girls, a homage to the science fiction pioneer Octavia Butler and the Where We Are series, which explored community spaces from a Nigerian thrift market to a Detroit cotillion. She spearheaded a package marking the 100th anniversary of suffrage - for which she created a board game and co-wrote a best-selling book - and shepherded various cross-desk projects, such as one on the 50th anniversary of the Pentagon Papers and another on the ways our lives continue to be shaped by 9/11. For the past two years, she's run The Times's annual holiday gift guide extravaganza.

Jen is not unfamiliar to us here at the Book Review. Two years ago, she worked on Chapters, the project marking our 125th anniversary, and she's currently involved with our Read Your Away Around the World series. She's also written the occasional review and essay, like this sprightly history of giving books as gifts. Prior to her work on Projects and Initiatives, Jen served as a news assistant on the National desk before embedding as a reporter on the archival storytelling team Past Tense - where she wrote a history of roller derby, profiled a female private eye and created a 50 states archival quiz, to name just a few pieces.

Jen is originally from Louisville, Ky., and went to Brown, where she studied comparative literature and French, with a concentration in literary translation. When not working, she can be found baking treats, often to share with her co-workers - a skill she picked up while working at a cake shop in Paris. Jen will join the desk on Monday.