A West Virginia native, Jessie van Eerden holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. She was selected as the 2007-08 Milton Fellow at Image and Seattle Pacific University for work on her first novel, Glorybound (WordFarm, October 2012). Her prose has appeared in The Oxford American, River Teeth, Bellingham Review, and other publications. Her essays have been selected for inclusion in Best American Spiritual Writing and Sarabande’s forthcoming Red Holler: An Anthology of Contemporary Appalachian Literature. Jessie directs the low-residency MFA program of West Virginia Wesleyan College.