Associate Editor + Projects Coordinator

Jessica Willingham is a writer and editor from Oklahoma, where she lives surrounded by a vast home library, wildflowers, and the electric hum of the plains. Her work is rooted in the interior feminine experience, exploring radiance, desire, and transformation amid the realities of rural life. A graduate of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project (2019–2021), she studied fiction under the mentorship of Erika Krouse, who described her novel manuscript as “a lyrical journey through the corrupt cultural mores of a small Oklahoma town, where laws are negotiable and the status quo must be obeyed. I connected with her wry, dark sense of humor, the wisdom in her observations, and her unflinching look at justice as it continues to conflict with our imagining of the American Dream. She taught us to stun with prose, to always chase the magic, and to turn settings into Shiva-esque angels and monsters that come alive, shed blood, and show us our humanity.”

While that first novel is now shelved, its obsessions remain central to her work. Her prose has been nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net Anthology (2023, 2024), appeared on the longlist for Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions (2024), and received a nomination for Best Microfiction (2025). She was named a semi-finalist for the 2024 St. Lawrence Book Award by Black Lawrence Press. Jessica has served on the masthead of Five South and as a reader for The Masters Review, Fractured Lit, and Bi-Coastal Review. Her editorial work has also appeared with Brit + Co and Bustle.

She is drawn to writing that explores unique landscapes and heritage, especially the ways history informs contemporary life in places like Oklahoma, where reading and writing remain deeply political, and sometimes dangerous. She seeks work that is unflinchingly honest without exploitation, accessible while maintaining literary excellence, and capable of moving real-world conversations to a higher plane.

Jessica is a devotee of the almighty “We” first-person plural perspective and stories that blend mystery with modernity. She values rhythmic language, realism in dialogue, and the kind of restraint that pricks at the heart of grief, longing, and hope in readers. Irish American and Native American folklore, mysticism, and surrealism infuse both her reading and her own work. 

Her debut poetry collection, Catfish Belly, is forthcoming from Belle Point Press in 2026. She is proud to be an independent artist from a sometimes unexpected place, representing the stories of America’s MidSouth region. When not writing or reading, she tends her garden, studies regional ancestry and history, and curates small constellations of beauty in her home and online.

Her favorite books include Vice: New and Selected Poems by Ai, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, and Dracula by Bram Stoker.

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