Jessica Hollander
Jessica lives in Northport, Alabama and is in the MFA program at the University of Alabama. She's originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she returns as often as possible. She lives with her energetic husband Richard and her six-month-old Oliver, lover of all things that move through the air.
When Jessica writes, she always starts at the beginning. When she writes often, she ends up with a lot of false starts. Usually she shoves these in a folder titled "junk" and feels bad about herself and never looks at them again. But she's begun to wonder about these failures, if they could be worth something, if there's something to learn from them or appreciate about them despite their junkiness. She hopes the blog section of this site will allow her to share some beginnings that didn't make it and also some thoughts, questions, and frustrations about writing.
New Blog Entry - When Undergarments Aren’t Interesting: Another Blog About Underwear
Submitted by Jessica on Fri, 08/27/2010 - 09:37
Despite my better judgment, I returned to the underwear inspiration and started with the editorial headline itself as the opening bit of dialogue...
New Blog Entry - I Think I'm on a Sadness Strike
Submitted by Jessica on Wed, 08/11/2010 - 11:27Occasionally I write a beginning and I know this story is going to be fun. These are stories I write very quickly. These are my favorite: frantic, crazy stories that make fun of themselves and their characters and certain horriblenesses in the world...
Quarterly West Arrived!
Submitted by Jessica on Mon, 08/02/2010 - 19:49My piece "March On" is in Quarterly West 69
Mired in the late-processes of moving, my mother left trails of things everywhere: clothes strewn from dressers, condiments rolling around by the refrigerator, stacks of books leading from shelves in ragged, precarious steps. I hadn’t even realized these things were left: they’d been so well hidden in drawers, behind doors, in tight-lines of themselves; but now they were dragged out, looked at, and dropped: abandoned as my mother flitted around, suddenly overwhelmed, suddenly needing help.
Fringe Post: Lets All Write Novels and Make Piles of Money
Submitted by Jessica on Wed, 07/28/2010 - 16:37
New Blog Entry - Writers Try to Write – Not Always
Submitted by Jessica on Mon, 07/26/2010 - 10:51At Sewanee Writers’ Conference these past two weeks. Initially, I was motivated to keep up my “write every day” experiment while every day also going to lectures, workshops, a half-dozen reading, and three cafeteria meals summer-camp style, where we all briefly faked it, acting more intelligent and sophisticated than most of us could get away with back home where people knew us as neurotic hermits...
Repackaged
Submitted by Jessica on Sat, 07/24/2010 - 12:23FRiGG Live!
Submitted by Jessica on Mon, 07/19/2010 - 16:15
My piece, "Staring Contests," is live in the summer 2010 FRiGG!
She sits on the brown carpet looking at me, two naked Barbie dolls in front of her, but she isn’t playing with them. I peek at her over the top of my paperback—and she raises her eyebrows and lets out a gasp. Her cheeks turn pink, but she doesn’t look away.
“Let’s go to the school,” I tell her. “You like the swings?”
She nods, watches me stand, yawn, fix my ponytail, and then I stop with my hands in the air, my mouth still open, and it’s my turn to stare. This is the game, a game I won’t lose to a four-year-old named Lindy...
LITnIMAGE Live!
Submitted by Jessica on Mon, 07/19/2010 - 09:04
My piece, "Like the Last One," is live in the summer 2010 LITnIMAGE!
Four years later, and the father still wanted to preserve the room: the long maple dresser and crib, the wooden pull-toys on the shelves, the soft clown mobile bobbing from the ceiling.
The mother refused to restore these relics. “I believe in a healthy new start that doesn’t involve the cleaning of old toys.” ...
Fringe Post: Destination Voice
Submitted by Jessica on Tue, 07/13/2010 - 16:23