Jenney Egertson

Writing has been a significant part of every professional job I’ve ever had: as an English teacher at a St. Louis alternative high school in the 1980s; as a freelance writer and later as a corporate executive in the 1990s; and ever since then, as I’ve worked myself in and out of several corporate communications jobs, with happy periods in between as a freelance communications strategist, writer/editor, and meeting facilitator.

I began writing my first book, Before I Leave, in 2000, after meeting an eighty-year-old woman I couldn’t forget. For the next eighteen years I interviewed, came to love, and wrote about a total of six women, all over the age of eighty at the time I met them, and most in their mid-to late nineties by the time they died. My final subject—my mother, Edith—still lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

I began my second book, Selma's Mayor, in early 2020 after meeting former Selma Mayor George Evans on a tour. We worked together for three years to tell the story about his remarkable life growing up in segregated Selma, his career as Selma's first Black Superintendent of Dallas County Schools, its first Black city council president, and its second Black mayor. When we lost the mayor suddenly in May of 2023 I completed the book on my own. His is a remarkable story of how a boy with no aspiration to lead became and remains a beloved figure in Selma simply by saying "yes" to opportunity when it came his way.

I’ve lived in Minneapolis since 1986. These days, I divide my time between writing a blog about the topics I explored as I wrote both books, traveling with my handsome partner, caring for my beloved greyhound and an adorable chihuahua, and fishing—either alone at a city lake or with anyone who will take me to a new and different body of water. I also set aside time every day for my favorite pastimes—spending time with my daughter, Rowan, and reading.