Jessica Walsh

Jessica L. Walsh is the mother of Stella Simone, born March 2007. She is a poet and assistant professor of English at Harper College in suburban Chicago. She strayed into literary criticism for a time during graduate studies but has returned to her roots as a poet, prompted in part by her efforts to unravel the many knots and tangles of motherhood through a creative medium. She wrote “Given” as she began to better understand the journey her own mother had taken over the years. Her poem “Ataraxis” won the 2007 Abbie M. Copps Poetry Award and will be published in Garfield Lake Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in artisan: a journal of craft, The Listening Eye, Driftwood, the Furnace Review, Blood and Fire Review, Mobius, and The New Press Literary Quarterly.