Interconnections: The Research and Writing Process for ‘Joy Rides Through the Tunnel of Grief’
April 8, 2024
Meet VCU Authors: Jessica Nelson
Start time: 12:00 p.m.
End time: 1:00 p.m
Location: Virtual
In this talk, Jessica Hendry Nelson will discuss the intersections of her research, creative process, and teaching, and offer insights into framing a memoir through a conceptual lens.
Joy Rides through the Tunnel of Grief by Jessica Hendry Nelson is a fresh and ferocious memoir-in-essays that maps the boundaries of love, language, and creative urgency.
About the Speaker
Jessica Hendry Nelson’s latest book, Joy Rides Through the Tunnel of Grief (UGA 2023), is a memoir-in-essays and the winner of the 2022 AWP Sue William Silverman Prize in Creative Nonfiction. She is the author of the memoir If Only You People Could Follow Directions (Counterpoint 2014), which was selected as a best debut book by the Indies Introduce New Voices program, the Indies Next List by the American Booksellers' Association, named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Review. It received starred reviews in Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly, and reviewed nationally in print and on NPR—including twice in (O) Oprah Magazine—and was a finalist for the Vermont Book Award. She is also co-author of the textbook and anthology Advanced Creative Nonfiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology along with the writer Sean Prentiss (Bloomsbury 2021). Her work has appeared in the anthology Bending Genre, edited by Nicole Walker and Margot Singer (Bloomsbury 2023), as well as The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, The Los Angeles Review of Books, North American Review, The Rumpus, The Carolina Quarterly, Columbia Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, PANK, Drunken Boat and elsewhere. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University and also teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. More at jessicahnelson.com.