“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 received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships, and grants from MacDowell (’21, ’23), Yaddo (’22, ’24), Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Hawthornden Foundation, Center for Fiction, Baldwin for the Arts, Tin House, Writer’s Block Residency, and Granum Foundation. His writing has been published in the Best American Short Stories, New York Times Book Review, Yale Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, n+1, Electric Literature, and elsewhere.
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. He has taught at Columbia University and elsewhere.
Photo credit: Roque Nonini