Jenna Blum has been writing professionally since she was sixteen, when in 1986 her short story, "The Legacy of Frank Finklestein" won first prize in Seventeen Magazine's National Fiction Contest. Since then, Jenna's short stories and nonfiction have appeared in numerous literary and commercial periodicals, including Faultline, The Kenyon Review (which awarded her the Charles Monroe Coffin Prize for Short Fiction), The Bellingham Review, Glamour, Mademoiselle, and The Improper Bostonian.

Jenna's debut novel, Those Who Save Us, was published in hardcover by Harcourt in 2004 and in paperback in 2005. Excerpts from the novel appeared in Meridian, Prairie Schooner, and The Briar Cliff Review, which published two chapters from the book and nominated Jenna for a Pushcart Prize. In 2005, Hadassah Magazine published an excerpt from Those Who Save Us and awarded Jenna the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, adjudged by Elie Wiesel, for excellence in Jewish-themed literature.