Jessica Barksdale’s fifteenth novel, The Play’s the Thing, and second poetry collection, Grim Honey, were both published spring 2021.

A Pushcart Prize and Best-of-the-Net nominee, her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in the Waccamaw Journal, Salt Hill Journal, Tahoma Review, and So to Speak. Her work has been recognized and honored by The Sewanee Review, The Wigleaf, The North American Review, and The Ocotillo Review

Recently retired, she taught at Diablo Valley College for thirty-two years and continues to teach novel writing online for UCLA Extension and in the online MFA program for Southern New Hampshire University.