Jessica Hendry Nelson is the author of If Only You People Could Follow Directions (2014), which was selected as a best debut book by the Indies Introduce New Voices program, the Indies Next List by the American Booksellers' Association, and named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Review. She is also co-author of the textbook and anthology Advanced Creative Nonfiction: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2021) along with the writer Sean Prentiss . Her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Tin House, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Carolina Quarterly, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. She is Assistant Professor in the MFA program and English Department at Virginia Commonwealth University and on faculty in the MFA Program at the University of Nebraska in Omaha.