Based in the fascinating and multicultural country known as Miami, Jen is one of the most oddly prolific writers around. An editor, author and poet as well as pen-for-hire, she tackles a variety of lifestyle subjects: food, travel, wine, liquor, literature, health, medicine, sexuality, arts, culture, home, garden, shopping, parenting, children – even cats and dogs. In fact, it’s probably easier to list what she won’t write about: politics (she’d rather shop at a Banana Republic than discuss one); finance and technology (intellectual equivalents to Valium and Xanax); and professional sports (because there’s just no more room in her brain for all those stats). Given her versatility, plus her inability to turn down any assignment – a combination of a Jewish middle-class upbringing and every freelancer’s fear that the work might someday dry up – Jen’s byline has appeared about a zillion times. But that’s just a rough guesstimate. Some of the pubs that have generously included her work are: Arthur Frommer’s Smart Shopping, The Atlantan, Boca Raton Magazine, Chicken Soup for the Soul Magazine, Chile Pepper, Chowbaby.com, Continental Magazine, Diversion, Florida Table, Florida Travel & Life, Food.com, Gayot.com, julib.com, The Miami Herald, The New York Times, Ocean Drive, Poets & Writers, PrematurE.com, SocialMiami.com, Vegas, Wave Life and Women's Health & Fitness. In addition, because she plays well with others as long as they are at the other end of the Internet, Jen has worked for custom publishing companies such as Condé Nast Traveler, International Publishing Concepts, International Voyager Media, Morris Visitors Publications, Onboard Media, Pearl Media Publications and Time Warner Publications. Fresh out of graduate school with a very useful masters of fine arts degree in poetry from University of California, Irvine, Jen got her start as a restaurant critic at the alternative weekly Miami New Times in 1992, when editor-in-chief Jim Mullin recognized something invaluable in her: waitressing experience. (Throughout high school, college and graduate school, Jen has worked as everything from a bakery cashier to a foodrunner.) She became restaurant critic of sister paper New Times Broward/Palm Beach in 1997, whereupon she started simultaneously writing the infamous “Dish” and “Side Dish” columns for the Miami paper. Those columns were retired when Jen resigned from the New Times group (which is now owned by Village Voice) in 2004 to write books. During her tenure at New Times, Jen earned the inimitable moniker, “Kavetchnik,” from a reader who claimed that all she did was complain. Jen doesn’t mind. This Yiddish joke on her last name, Karetnick, makes a memorable email address (Kavetchnik@aol.com). It is also an improvement over her last two handles: “Killer,” which lasted her entire soccer career, thanks to her first coach Mr. Waddon; and the interestingly prescient “Stuffed Shells,” which was bestowed upon her in seventh grade when she began to rapidly develop and a couple of boys didn’t believe it was, er, honest. (Though embarrassing then, today she finds that latter nickname very creative on their part.) Jen currently works as the features editor for Wine News; dining editor for SoFlorida; dining contributor for Las Olas Magazine; restaurant critic for MIAMI Magazine; and “Neighborhood Correspondent” for Biscayne Times (owned, published and edited, incidentally, by her first boss, Jim Mullin). She also writes for the Informed Ape News Service and is the “Arts and Culture Expert” for the interactive website VisitFlorida.com. Told you she could multitask. Of course, all this is subject to change at any time. The author of Around Miami with Kids (Random House, 2000) and chapters for Fodor's Miami and Florida guidebooks, Jen is co-author of Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow (HarperCollins, 2005) and editor of Hungry? Thirsty? Miami: The Lowdown on Where the Real People Eat and Drink (Glove Box Guides, summer 2007). Her next project, Born Again Vintage, written for designer Bridgett Fernandez, will be released by Potter Craft in summer, 2008. In addition to the poetry MFA, Jen somewhere along the way earned another MFA degree from University of Miami. This one was in fiction, though she probably took more poetry workshops than short story craft classes. As a result, she has placed more than 75 poems in journals and anthologies including Barrow Street, Black River Review, The Greensboro Review, The Nebraska Review, North American Review, River Styx, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Sou'wester and Valparaiso Poetry Review. She was awarded a 2005 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize for a lyric poem. Her poetry chapbook, Necessary Salt, was released by Pudding House Publications (March, 2007). Jen has never published any piece of fiction, unless you count journalism. Combining her interests in poetry and fine dining, Jen created and co-directs Now Taste This!™ (www.nowtastethis.com), a poet-chef pairing event that benefits literary organizations. She is a frequent guest on Linda Gassenheimer's "Restaurant Roundabout" program on Miami's WLRN public radio, a station on which she has also read her poetry, and has also made local appearances on WDNA FM, WSVN TV and Miami-Dade TV. She has read locally at the Miami International Book Fair and Books & Books. Jen has won significant honors from the North American Travel Journalists Association, Association of Food Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Missouri School of Journalism, and is a member of the Poetry Society of America, Association of Writers and Writing Programs, and Les Dames d'Escoffier. She lives in Miami Shores on an historic mango plantation with her husband Jon, a neurologist with whom she co-authors articles; their kids, Zoe and Remy; dogs, Loki and S’more; cats, Orson, Reilly, Fina and BeBe; and 14 mango trees of various pedigrees. In her spare time, she plays flute with the Miami Shores Flute Ensemble – a link to her past in which she did, indeed, go to “band camp.”