This Is a Love Story

Jessica Soffer is an American author who grew up in New York City and lives in Sag Harbor, New York. Soffer attended Connecticut College, where she met her husband and currently teaches creative writing. She also leads small writing groups in her local community.

Soffer’s personal life features heavily in her short stories, personal essays, and her two novels, There Will Be Apricots (2013) and This Is a Love Story (2025). In her New York Times op-ed article, Soffer explains that There Will Be Apricots “is about food: an old woman and a young girl find solace in the kitchen and in each other” and is loosely inspired by Soffer’s own connection to eating and her mother (Soffer, Jessica. “Real Moms Don’t Cook.” The New York Times, 11 May 2013). Soffer expounds upon her relationship with food in the article, describing how she translated her mother’s atypical cooking habits into literature—a facet of her personal history that inspired her reflections on the relationship between love and food. Portions of There Will Be Apricots also recall Soffer’s Iraqi background: Her father’s family is from Iraq, and Soffer remembers her aunt making “long-simmering things, Iraqi stews and pastries laced with cardamom and cinnamon and cloves” (Soffer).