Description:
Cycles through life, death, violation, and reclamation, blurring the lines between past and present, human and animal, and sacred and profane.
Brief description: Chelsea C. Jackson (they/she) is a cross-genre writer, editor, and literaryconsultant. They believe creativity is a catalyst for change and use their workto ask hard questions, interrogate inherited social narratives, and explore whatit means to be human. Chelsea holds an MDiv and MFA in Poetry fromDrew University, is the Co-Editor of The Maine Review, and offersworkshops, classes, and other events to foster community and support writersin their writing and publishing goals. Chelsea is published in RiverfeetPress, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, Coffin Bell Journal, Bridge Eight, Hearthand Coffin Literary Journal, and Beyond Queer Words, among otherpublications, and was a finalist in the 2020 Driftwood Press In-House PoetryContest and the 2022 Animal Heart Poetry Collection Contest. After movingaround for over a decade, they recently returned to their home state ofVirginia to help co-create a more just, equitable, and eco-conscious "NewSouth," be closer to family (and the water), and vie for the title of "CoolestAuntie." They live in Richmond with their partner and cuddly pitbull. Youcan connect with them at chelsea-jackson.com or on Instagram/X/TikTok@sea_c_j.
Review Quotes:
"I read Chelsea Jackson's amazing debut collection, All Things Holy and Heathen, twice to savor its bodily vitality more deeply. Jackson is shameless and charming, brimming with suffering and healing. They are an inventor of names like 'The One Whose Voice is Lullabies' and 'The One Whose Hands are Stained Red, ' and they speak with 'wrung-out lungs screaming for salvation' as they offer us 'the universe's sigil, infinite abundance.' This book is music, is magic, is potent, is precious. Read it and rejoice."
- Alicia Ostriker, author of Waiting for the Light and The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems, 2002-2020.
"Visceral, vibrant, magically singular and seductive. Jackson's imagination, style, and refreshing voice lull readers into their haunting world. We are grateful for the invitation into this chaotic realm of memory and reverie and want more and more.
- Jose Hernandez Diaz, author of The Fire Eater and Bad Mexican, Bad American.
"In All Things Holy and Heathen, Jackson sets down a winding path, walking with us as we pluck flowers for their familiar and just-on-the-tip-of-our-tongue aroma, and kick over rocks to inspect the slithering and crawling in the darkness underneath. In the end, it is impossible to come away from the page without feeling as though having peered through a looking glass-reflecting both outwardly, and within-to our future, and throughout our past."
- Grim and Gilded