Jessie van Eerden is the author of a collection of portrait essays, The Long Weeping, and three novels, Call It Horses (winner of the 2019 Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction), My Radio Radio, and Glorybound. Her prose has appeared in Best American Spiritual Writing, The Oxford American, River Teeth, and Ruminate, among other publications. She directs the low-residency MFA writing program of West Virginia Wesleyan College.

“When I was thinking about grad school, I was deciding between an MFA and a Masters in Social Work and Peace Studies. It was a tough choice; I was trying to figure out what would lead to the most meaningful work. An MFA at first glance seemed a self-indulgence, and an MSW seemed to be a path to Serious Work in the World. But when it came down to making the decision, I tried to follow a deeper current in me that trusted that somehow my relationship to expression and artistic endeavor was going to be my work, however serious that work would turn out to be. I was writing pyrotechnic lyric essays at the time and wanted to learn, most basically, how to craft narrative and how to make my work with language sustainable, more accessible to others, and somehow more substantial. That’s why I went to the NWP, to shape story and to learn to connect my personal story to the larger human story. Lucky for me, I found in Susan Lohafer (a short story theorist) a mentor in storying. She taught me narrative pressure and arc, for essay and also for the two novels I would write after graduating. She, the other faculty, and my gifted peers all gave me a foundation for making writing and teaching my life work, and I’ve never looked back. In my position as a professor and low-residency MFA director now, I use what I learned at Iowa daily.”