A West Virginia native, Jessie van Eerden holds a BA in English from West Virginia University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Oxford American, River Teeth, Image, Bellingham Review, Rock & Sling, and other publications. Her essays have been selected for inclusion in Dreams and Inward Journeys: A Rhetoric and Reader for Writers, Seventh Edition (Longman, 2010); Best American Spiritual Writing (Houghton Mifflin, 2006); and Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical (Cascade Books of Wipf and Stock, 2009). She was selected as the 2007-2008 Milton Fellow with Image and Seattle Pacific University for work on her first novel, Glorybound (WordFarm, 2012).
Jessie has taught for over ten years in college classrooms and in adult literacy programs. She lives in West Virginia where she directs the low-residency MFA writing program of West Virginia Wesleyan College.
To see what Jessie has been reading, visit her Goodreads page.
To learn more about WV Wesleyan’s MFA program, visit the program website.
