Editor

Jessica Denzer is a writer and educator. She received her B.A. in English Literature from Fordham University and her M.F.A. in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a researcher in residence at the New York Public Library and writes fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Number Magazine, the Unpublishable Anthology, and West Trade Review, among others. Her short story “The Silence” was selected for Alternating Current Press Best Small Fictions of 2023. That same year she was involved with the launch of Iron Oak Editions, a new independent publisher of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, where she serves as Prose Editor and provides full novel critiques. In 2024 she and Dan White launched Indirect Books, a new independent publisher. Having previously served as an Associate Fiction Editor for West Trade Review, she is currently a contributing editor and writer for Four Way Review and teaches writing and literature at Fordham University.

Jessica is particularly drawn to winding, language-driven narrative that is both risky and well constructed. In other words, she likes the risk that takes the long road. Her own writing mixes the personal and historical with fiction to develop long winding narratives that stumble around the raw parts of human nature. She writes fiction and non-fiction, as well as scholarly essays, mostly on monsters and strange Edwardian literature. She has a finished novel, Mythologies, which spans the last decade of the 19th century through WWII, following a family who emmigrates from Europe only to be sent back a generation later to fight WWI. She is currently working on several essays and another novel, currently untitled. The second novel follows a 30-something adjunct lecturer, living in New York City and coping with the death of her closest friend while simultaneously having an affair with her friend’s ex-husband. It’s about grief and sex, it’s very juicy but also extremely literary. 

Some of Jessica’s favorite books as representative titles include Anne Carson’s Glass, Irony, and God and The Autobiography of Red, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, Roberto Bolaño’s 2066, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon. Her personal site is here and she can be found on Instagram @jessdenz.

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