Jessica writes us in March 1998: "I am 26 years old. I grew up in New York City, and I have lived, worked and traveled in a number of different places including: teaching English in Katmandu, Nepal, volunteering on a community health project in a village in Brazil, and traveling by myself in India and Eastern Europe. I also worked teaching women's health exams at medical schools in New York City, and coordinating a writing and literature program for children and teenagers in New Jersey.

"For the past two years I have been homebound with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and I have been studying Writing and Education through a distance-learning program at Empire State College. I live in a house in the country in Upstate, NY.

"I was awarded a Tara Fellowship for Short Fiction from The Heekin Group Foundation, and first prize in the 1997 Shenango River Books Prose Chapbook Award for my chapbook In Jenna's Dream. My poems and stories have appeared in The Crescent Review, Earth's Daughters, Borderlands, So To Speak, and Quarter After Eight.


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