About Jessica

Jessica Barksdale Inclán's fifteenth novel, The Play's the Thing, was published by TouchPoint Press in May 2021. Her other novels include the award-winning The Burning Hour as well as contemporary fiction Her Daughter's Eyes, The Matter of Grace, and When You Believe. Finishing Line Press published her debut poetry collection When We Almost Drowned March 2019. Her second poetry collection, Grim Honey, was published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions April 2021.

In February 2023, her latest novel, What the Moon Did, was published by Flexible Press. And after many years of writing and publishing short stories, her first collection Trick of the Porch Light is forthcoming from Mouthfeel Press in August 2023.

A Pushcart Prize, Million Writers Award, and Best-of-the-Net nominee, her short stories, poems, and creative nonfiction have appeared in or are forthcoming in The Sun, North American Review, Salt Hill Journal, Tahoma Review, Carve Magazine, StoryQuarterly, and Tar River Poetry among many others.

At Diablo Valley College, Barksdale Inclán taught composition, creative writing, and literature and was chair of the creative writing committee and coordinated literature week and began the yearly student writing contest.

She continues to teach novel writing online for UCLA Extension and in the MFA program for Southern New Hampshire University. She holds an MA in English Literature from San Francisco State University and an MFA from the Rainier Writers Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jessica now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband.