Jeffe Kennedy is a fantasy and erotic romance author who has published dozens of novels, including the fantasy romance series The Twelve Kingdoms, The Uncharted Realms and The Chroniclles of Dasnaria from Kensington Books. Her novel The Pages of the Mind won the 2017 RITA Award for Best Paranormal Romance. In 2019, St. Martin's Press will release The Orchid Throne, her first book in a new romantic fantasy series titled The Forgotten Empires.
Kennedy has published 16 novels, many of which are erotic romance or epic romantic fantasies. She has also published essays, short stories and poetry in a number of publications including Redbook, The SFWA Bulletin, and Romantic Times, among others. Kennedy says that "Fantasy romance hits my sweet spot. The fantasy aspect lets me create worlds, set up the social mores for maximum thrill and have heroines who are larger than life. The romance gives me room to have the heroines find themselves through sexual exploration and the love of someone who appreciates them as no one else does. Both allow for the heights of emotion that lead to personal transformation, which I love." Kennedy's stories have been praised for being "well-written and swooningly romantic" containing relationships which are "gripping and realistic." Her stories have also been praised for their "depth of worldbuilding." She previously wrote the blog Contemporary Romance Cafe.
Awards and honors
Kennedy has received a fellowship from the Ucross Foundation, a Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. The Mark of the Tala, the first book in the Twelve Kingdoms series, was the winner of a 2014 Seal of Excellence award from Romantic Times and a finalist for the 2014 Romantic Times Book of the Year. The third book in the series, The Talon of the Hawk, won the 2015 Best Fantasy Romance Award from Romantic Times while the series' second novel The Tears of the Rose was a finalist for the same award in 2014. The Pages of the Mind, the first book in Kennedy's Uncharted Realms series, was a finalist for the 2016 Best Fantasy Romance Award from Romantic Times and won the 2017 RITA Award from the Romance Writers of America. The book For Crown and Kingdom: A Duo of Fantasy Romances, containing one novella by Grace Draven and one by Kennedy, was selected by Library Journal as one of the Best Books of 2016 in the category of e-originals genre fiction. Her novella "The Dragons of Summer," which first appeared in the anthology Seasons of Sorcery, was a finalist for a 2019 RITA Award.
