Jessica Lee Richardson (Jess/she/her+) is the author of the collection, It Had Been Planned and There Were Guides (FC2), which won the Sukenick Prize and was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award. Her short work and novel-in-progress have enjoyed some delightful honors and stories have appeared or are forthcoming online in the Commuter at Electric Lit, evergreen, Gulf Coast, and other great places. She was born in New Jersey, spent her twenties in Brooklyn, and after a decade teaching at places like Coastal Carolina University, Rutgers, Staton Correctional Facility, and the University of Alabama, where she received her MFA, she is now an Associate Professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art. All the time in the south has prepared her to recklessly lick icicles and exclaim about deciduous leaves with her partner, Yasu, and pup-in-crime, Aizen-Raisin-Roo.

*photo by Joel Brouwer