Jerry VanSchaik

Jerry Vanschaik is America’s premier coffee novelist, perhaps because he is the only one! He has written three full-length novels: Tripio, The Trier: A Week in the Life and Death of a Coffeehouse, and the follow up, The Trier Goes to London. He also had written a YA novella, Ironjaws, the first draft of which was typed on paper!

Jerry began his career in coffee during the late 1980s at a post-hippie coffee house in Dayton, Ohio. After twenty years in coffee, Jerry left the business behind, but not the coffee. He chose to write about it instead, using the time and distance from the business to give him the space and freedom to create novels in which coffee is a seed diverted, and in which the coffee does a lot more than just get cold. (A line I just can’t resist using.)

Writing has always been a type of meditative practice for Jerry. He began journaling after leaving college and keeps a journal to this day. In order to keep his mind in a place of energized calm so that he can sit down to write, Jerry does yoga, meditates, the aforementioned journaling, reads, and tries not to take it all too seriously. His four young adult children make sure of that.

Jerry left the coffee business behind him but still starts the day with a double espresso.