“Streetwise, energetic, and wry, Jackson’s writing crackles. This is prose that makes music on the page.” - Elliott Holt, Deputy Editor, Kenyon Review
Jared Jackson is a writer, editor, educator, and arts administrator born in Hartford, CT. He has been awarded residencies, fellowships, and grants from MacDowell (’21, ’23), Yaddo (’22, ’24), Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Center for Fiction, Baldwin for the Arts, Instituto Sacatar, Tin House, Writer’s Block Residency, Loghaven, Hawthornden Foundation, and Granum Foundation. His writing has been published in the Best American Short Stories, Yale Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, n+1, VQR, New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University.
Currently, Jackson is the director of programs and partnerships at Poets & Writers, Inc. He was previously the program director of literary programs at PEN America, where he oversaw writing and public programs, including showcasing the world’s most distinguished authors and artists such as Zadie Smith, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ai Weiwei, Wole Soyinka, Isabel Allende, and Marilynn Robinson, among others.
In 2022, he was named a New York Foundation for the Arts Executive Leader of Color.
Photo credit: Roque Nonini