Jessica Hendry Nelson
Fiction
Richmond, VA
Jessica Hendry Nelson is a writer, professor, faculty editor of Blackbird: an online journal of art & literature, and co-producer of The Blackbird Literary Podcast. Her latest book, Joy Rides Through the Tunnel of Grief (2023), a memoir-in-essays, won the AWP Sue William Silverman Prize in Creative Nonfiction and was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is also the author of the memoir If Only You People Could Follow Directions (2014), which was selected as a best debut book by the Indies Introduce New Voices program, the Indies Next List by the American Booksellers' Association, and named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Review. It received starred reviews in Kirkus and Publishers’ Weekly, and reviewed nationally in print and on NPR—including twice in (O) Oprah Magazine—and was a finalist for the Vermont Book Award. She is also co-author of the textbook and anthology Advanced Creative Nonfiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, along with the writer Sean Prentiss (2021). Her work has appeared or will appear in the anthologies Bending Genre, 2nd ed. (2023), The Essay Form(s) (2026), and Between Our Legs (2026). Her work has also appeared in The Sun Magazine, the Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, The Los Angeles Review of Books, North American Review, Northwest Review, The Rumpus, Carolina Quarterly, Columbia Journal, PANK, and elsewhere. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Virginia Commonwealth University. More at jessicahnelson.com.