From insightful interviews to engaging essays, Jessica's work resonates with readers and critics alike.
In this episode of Hear-tell, Pat Thomas—MFA Distinguished Professor of Practice at the University of Georgia—joins award-winning author Jessica Handler to talk about Pat’s essay for The Bitter Southerner, “The Answer Is Yes.” Their conversation moves through memory, hesitation, and what it takes to finally write the story you’ve been quietly avoiding. Together, they reflect on how grief shapes our work and how timing, courage, and curiosity can change what we’re able to say on the page. Here is a link to Pat’s essay: https://bittersoutherner.com/feature/2024/the-answer-is-yes And here are links to Jessica Handler’s website with links to all her books: https://www.jessicahandler.com/
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Hear/Tell with Jessica Handler & Pat Thomas
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Phone alarm 7:30 a.m., Glenn Gould storming his way through The Goldberg Variations. The music puts me in mind of my mother, who loved Bach.
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Big Table Press
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Articulate. My husband has a twelve-inch-tall action figure of me — I’m serious — about the size of a Barbie doll. She is “fully articulated,” which in action-figure speak means that her arms and legs and head can swivel. When he had this made, he had one made of himself, too. It was a passing fad, a kind of a joke between us.
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Another Chicago Magazine
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Stop what you’re doing, and pay attention to your senses. How your fingers feel on the keyboard, or your feet on the floor. What about sound? Is your playlist going (and what’s on it?) or is that a trash truck grinding away on the street?
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Brevity
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Excerpt from "The World to See" forthcoming from Regal House
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This is one of those stories you bring out near last call so you’ll never have to go home.
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Short Reads
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Stop what you’re doing right now and cue this baby up. It will only take about three minutes of your time, the length of a standard radio pop hit. Because that’s what it is. A power-pop hit.
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March Fadness
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“Notice,” my yoga teacher coos. I open one eye to notice that on the Zoom screen, he’s sitting upright. Sukhasana. I settle myself in the same posture on my yoga mat in my living room, legs crossed, spine straight.
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Brevity Magazine
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When I was 8 years old, my father, who turned out to be terrible with money, worked on a colleague’s campaign for U.S. Senate. One day I walked into my parents’ bedroom to find my father sitting on the bed, surrounded by an ocean of cash.
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Oldster
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Last semester, one of my students asked me to change his grade on a quiz. The way I’d phrased a particular question wasn’t clear, he said, which is why he earned a 95 instead of a 100.
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Full Grown People
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My mother and I played a secret game in art museums. What, we would ask the other, is the single piece we would take for our own if such a thing were possible?
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After The Art
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In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
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Large Hearted Boy
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I’ve long wondered what makes a person believe something improbable — either really believe, or convince themselves to err on the side of a questionable opinion, even if on some level they suspect they’re being taken for a ride.
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Electric Literature
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When I tell you that my mother’s father was born in a Siberian prison, I’ll remind you that was because his parents were perhaps exiled as retribution for political acts. Or simply because they were Jews. He, however, was a baby.
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Brevity Mag
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When I was in my twenties, the house I shared with roommates in Arlington, Massachusetts was vandalized with a Molotov cocktail. This was the mid-1980s.
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The Manifestation
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When teenager Nadine Harvey helps her best friend hide a disturbing secret, she’s also concealing her own deepest truth: she’ll do almost anything to be wanted.
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In conversation with Virginia Prescott at Manuel's Tavern, celebrating the launch of The World to See
