Bio
Jennifer Shahade is a writer, entrepreneur and gamesplayer. She is a two-time American Women’s Chess Champion and the editor of Chess Life Online at uschess.org/clo. Her first book, Chess Bitch: Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport intertwined her own story with that of great women chess champions past and present. Shahade also contributed in-depth chess annotations to Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess. Jennifer’s latest book project, Play Like a Girl! Tactics by 9 Queens (see book trailer, Lipstick Checkmate, here) is the first book with combinations that are all executed by female chess champions.
Forever in search of new ways to present games, Jennifer created hula-chess and naked chess with Daniel Meirom and roulette-chess with artist and curator Larry List. In 2010, Hulachess was among 125 videos selected from over 23,000 for the first online gallery of the Guggenheim/Youtube Biennial. You can find more of Shahade and Meirom’s video work on PokerFairyTale.com. Jennifer also created a reality show, the X Chess Championships with her brother Greg and Daniel Meirom. You can find X Chess on twitter, facebook and YouTube.
Shahade was the chair of the US Championships committee from 2009 to 2011, all held at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. She also does play by play commentary and hosted video recaps during the US Chess Championships and US Women’s from 2009 to 2011. Jennifer performs simultaneous exhibitions in which she plays up to 50 people at once, in locations as various as Shanghai, China, Soweto, South Africa and a Girls’ Scout Convention in Los Angeles.
Since 2010, Jennifer has also made a push to promote women in poker. She is part of the PokerStars Women initiative, writing articles and conducting interviews for PokerStarsWomen.com. She is also the co-host of Women’s Poker Hour, a weekly radio show affiliated with Woman Poker Player Magazine. Guests have included Vanessa Rousso, Maria Ho, Amanda Musumeci, Lauren Kling and Pamela Brunson.
Jennifer is also a poker player-she placed 17th out of more than 1200 players in the 2007 Ladies World Series of Poker event. She followed this up with placing 33rd out of 1190 in the same event in 2008. She has also won a number of online poker tournaments and qualified to play in the Bahamas and Madrid via online satellites. Jennifer is a member of the “Grindettes”, four passionate female poker players (Katie Dozier, Jamie Kerstetter, Jennifer Shahade & Katie Stone) who are trying to prove that women can play just as well as men! Follow them on twitter ,facebook and listen to their weekly segment on Wednesday, 10 EST on Short Stack Radio.
Jennifer is on the board of directors of the World Chess Hall of Fame in Saint Louis. She has also participated in and helped organize events at art galleries and museums, including the Noguchi Museum in Queens, Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, the Saint Louis University Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, haudenschild Garage in San Diego, the De Kring Artist Society in Amsterdam, the Viewing Room Gallery in New York, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival and the Psycho-Geography Festival.
Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, New In Chess, the L.A. Times, Games Magazine, Woman Poker Player Magazine, The PokerStars Blog, the Borgata Poker Blog and Chess Life Magazine, for which Jennifer is the web-editor.
In 2007, Jennifer Shahade and Jean Hoffman founded 9queens, a non-profit that provides chess instruction to those most in need of its benefits, especially girls and at-risk youth. All the author royalties of her latest book project, Play Like a Girl! Tactics by 9 Queens (Mongoose Press, 2011) go to 9 Queens initiatives.
Jennifer has also worked with the non-profit Chess-In-The-Schools in New York. Her work with CIS included starting a Girls’ Academy and three years of training with the Championship Junior High School team, I.S. 318. She currently leads Philadelphia all-girls chess classes in conjunction with 9 Queens & ASAP (After Schools Activities Partnerships).
Follow Jennifer on twitter.com/jenshahade, and her USCF blog.
