Read: Jessica's poem "The Ballad of the Red Wisteria"

Jessica Q. Stark is a California-native, Vietnamese American poet, editor, and educator that lives in Jacksonville, Florida. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley and dual MA Degrees in English Literature and Cultural Studies from Saint Louis University’s Madrid Campus. She received her PhD in English from Duke University. She has published scholarly articles on poetry and comics studies and teaches writing at the University of North Florida.

Her poetry has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Society of America, Pleiades, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Carolina Quarterly, Poetry Daily, The Boiler, The Southeast Review, Hobart Pulp, Verse Daily, Tupelo Quarterly, Potluck, and for the Glass Poetry Journal: Poets Resist series. Her first poetry manuscript, The Liminal Parade, was selected by Dorothea Lasky for the Double Take Grand Prize in 2016 and was published by Heavy Feather Review. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks, including her most recent titled INNANET (The Offending Adam, 2021). 

Her full-length poetry collection, Savage Pageant, which was a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Book Prize, the 42 Miles Press Book Prize, and the Rose Metal Press Hybrid Book Prize, was published by Birds, LLC in March 2020. Savage Pageant was named one of the “Best Books of 2020” in The Boston Globe and in Hyperallergic. Her third poetry manuscript, Buffalo Girl, explores a short time in her mother’s life, Vietnamese-diasporic wolves, and different iterations of Little Red Riding Hood. She occasionally writes poetry reviews for Carolina Quarterly and is currently a Poetry Editor for AGNI and the Comics Editor for Honey Literary. She has lived in several cities across the globe, including Seoul, South Korea, Madrid, Spain, and for a short time in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, where she ran a backpackers’ hostel with her partner and learned how to crack a coconut with a machete. In her free time, she is a cat-lover and has been trained as a Level Two Reiki practitioner. 

Purchase Jessica Q. Stark's Savage Pageant (Birds LLC, 2020).