The Outside Boy

About Jeanine Cummins

Although born in Rota, Spain, author, Jeanine Cummins was born to American parents, as her Dad was stationed in Spain with the US Navy. She grew up in Gaithersburg, Maryland where she graduated from Towson State in English and Communications. After graduation, Cummin's travels took her to Belfast, Northern Ireland where she worked as a bartender. In 1997, she moved back to the United States to work at Penguin in New York City. It was after ten years of working for the publisher that she began her career as an author.

When Cummins was 16, there was an attempted murder of her brother, and an actual murder of her two cousins, which of course, was very traumatizing for the teenager. Her first book was about that horrendous memory. It is entitled A Rip in Heaven, for which she declined several offers to adapt the book to film.

Other works include, The Outside Boy, The Crooked Branch, and her latest, American Dirt. The book has been sold to Flatiron after a three-day bidding war which ended in Cummins receiving a seven-figure amount for American Dirt. It was on Oprah Winfrey's book list, but due to it's controversial subject matter, her planned book tour was cancelled, as Flatiron feared for her safety.

She considers herself white, but her grandmother was born and raised in Puerto Rico, where she says will be the setting of her next book. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.