Other Works
Short Prose
“God is strong and gentle-mouthed and loyal to the death. My hand on that harness God wears, I walk the woods, I walk the road, I come to love my darkness whose possibilities are double-sleeved in my unknowing and God’s knowing.”
Keep reading: “Love Letter on the Day of a Mammogram” essay in storySouth, Issue 55: Spring 2023
“Each fall, at the start of a new semester, the bright vibration of muscle memory has me reaching for leather work gloves and muck boots instead of syllabi. In the morning dark, I smell the sharp cold dirt of wresting tubers from the furrow behind the plow—until the coffee percolates and I throw on a dress and respectable heels, pack my lunch and laptop and texts.”
Keep reading: “Good Fire” essay in AGNI Online (April 2023) (nominated for Best of the Net)
“I’m trying to talk about the pause that is not a paucity, the silence that is not empty, the ache that is not only.”
Keep reading: “Bless the Smallest Hollow: On Longing and Online Dating” essay in Gulf Coast, 31.1 (Winter/Spring 2019); Winner of the 2018 Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction and listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2020
“The voice is an animal’s snort before attack. That is what it sounds like when I read the story this time, that kind of groan and agitation. A guttural hauling up, the voice ricochets in multiplied clamor, saying, ‘Come forth.’ According to second-century rabbis, the soul must now travel a long way back down the southeastern slope of the mountain, a full day gone free. Each morning for three days, the soul returned, from wherever it is souls go, to the tomb in Bethany, obliged to reenter the body if possible; but when it saw the skull finally sink in and face disfigure, jaw held on only by a stubborn strip of linen, the soul finally abandoned the body. Fourth day, though, here it is hooking back because the agitated-animal voice calls Lazarus.”
Keep reading: “What I Want Your Voice to Do” essay in Blackbird 17.1, Spring 2018
“Blessing for Homecoming” and “Blessing for the Demolition Derby” two flash essays in Still: The Journal #40, Fall 2022
“Meet You at the Dollar General Across from the Family Dollar” essay in Blackbird 18.2, Fall 2019
“Yoke” essay in Appalachian Review, Fall 2017 (Denny C. Plattner Award for Creative Nonfiction)
“Testimony” short story in The Tusculum Review “Featured Artist” online archive, May 2014
“Edna” short story in Newfound: An Inquiry of Place 2.2, July 2011
Interviews
Interview with M. Randal O’Wain in Southern Review of Books, “The Calculus of Desire and Faith: An Interview with Jessie van Eerden” (November 20, 2024)
Jessie talks books with Matt Sawyer for the Books on the Bed Podcast (November 22, 2024)
Listen to a reading of Jessie’s essay “A Story of Mary and Martha Taking in a Foster Girl” on NER Out Loud, followed by an interview with podcast host Courtney Wright. The essay appears in New England Review, Vol 40, No 3, 2019.
Interview with Mesha Maren in Southern Review of Books, “Jessie van Eerden on ‘Call It Horses,’ Appalachia and Characters’ Inner Lives” (June 28, 2021)
Interview about Call it Horses with Ellie Paolini in Scoundrel Time, “The Body of Language” (April 13, 2021)
Conversation with Brandie Gray in Blackbird (Vol 18, No 2; Fall 2019)
Interview about The Long Weeping in Speaking of Marvels, edited by William Woolfitt (November 15, 2017)
Appalachian Review blog, interviewed by Jason Howard (Sept 9, 2015)
Featured as Artist of the Month in Image, Dec 2012.
(Photo by Richard Schmitt)