Jessica Jacobs
Yetzirah/Founder & Executive Director
Biography
Jessica Jacobs, a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, is the author of unalone, poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis (Four Way Books, 2024), named one of Library Journal‘s Best Poetry Books of the year; Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019), also one of Library Journal‘s Best Poetry Books of the year, and winner of the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award from Southern Illinois University and the Goldie Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society, and a finalist for the Brockman-Campbell, American Fiction, Eric Hoffer, and Julie Suk Book Awards. Her debut collection, Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, won the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry, was an Over the Rainbow selection by the American Library Association and a finalist for the Lambda Literary and Julie Suk Awards. Her chapbook In Whatever Light Left to Us was published by Sibling Rivalry Press. She co-authored Write It!, a collection of writing prompts from Spruce Books, an imprint of Penguin/RandomHouse.
Jessica holds an M.F.A. from Purdue University, where she served as the Editor-in-Chief of Sycamore Review, and a B.A. from Smith College. She also served as the inaugural editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal‘s Chad Walsh Chapbook Series. Her poetry and essays have appeared widely and she leads workshops around the country, teaching for programs including the Fine Arts Work Center, Festival of Faith & Writing, and The Farminary, the Princeton Theological Seminary.
She is the founder and executive director of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.
Published Works
Poetry
unalone (Four Way Books, March 2024)
Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019)
In Whatever Light Left to Us (chapbook; Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016)
Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015)
Writing Craft Book
Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire, co-author (Spruce Books/PenguinRandomHouse, 2020)
Links to Sample Works
- Four Way Review, “Sing, O Barren One, Who Did Not Bear a Child”
- 32 Poems, “Ordinary Immanence”
- Screen Door Review, “A Question to Ask When the Honeymoon is Over”
