A West Virginia native, Jessie van Eerden holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Oxford American, River Teeth, Bellingham Review, and other publications. Her essays have been selected for inclusion in Dreams and Inward Journeys: A Rhetoric and Reader for Writers, Seventh Edition (Longman, 2010); Best American Spiritual Writing (Houghton Mifflin, 2006); and Sarabande Books’ Red Holler: An Anthology of Contemporary Appalachian Literature (2013). She was selected as the 2007-2008 Milton Fellow with Image and Seattle Pacific University for work on her first novel, Glorybound, released with WordFarm in October 2012 and currently a finalist for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award. Van Eerden has taught for over ten years in college classrooms and in adult literacy programs. She directs the low-residency MFA writing program of West Virginia Wesleyan College.