Jessica Wierzbinski
AUTHOR | TRAVELER
Contact Me
Special Projects
Open Call for Submissions: Women Hikers of the Colorado Trail
Are you planning to hike any or all of the Colorado Trail next summer or fall? Or have you already hiked it? I wanna hear about it! Or better, I want to meet up with you whenever you're near the Salida, CO, zone. Let me bring you a beer or a kombucha and hear about your journey--what inspired your trek, what you hope to learn from the journey, and what surprises you might have encountered along the way.
Things I Wish Someone Had Told me As a Young Woman
If you are interested in submitting something or know someone we should hit up for this project, please shoot us a note!
About
Jess Wierzbinski is a frequent contributor to Colorado Central Magazine and a sometime college English teacher living in a perfectly quirky little mountain town in central Colorado. Her most recent creative nonfiction essay won honorable mention in a contest hosted by e-zine WOW! It can be read here. Jess has published a handful of scholarly articles, her favorite being a close reading and analysis of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, published in Onoma: Journal of the International Council of Onomastic Sciences, which you can find here. She also writes occasional columns or news articles for various publications; here is one of them.
What I’ve Been Up To
Biblical References in Toni Morrison’s “Song of Soloman”
Published in issue 40 of the journal Onoma. Abstract: Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, the third of Morrison’s eight novels, is the story of Milkman Dead, a young African American man so pampered by the women around him that he grows up incapable of forming meaningful attachments or of assuming responsibility...
Earthships and Yurts on Poncha Pass
Under the expansive Poncha Pass sky of Central Colorado, Chris White leads his band of helpers in stacking old tires into a long, tidy row, which would eventually be stacked 10 tires high to create the earthen north wall of the earthship. His crew members come from around the country and offer their time and sweat each morning in exchange for afternoon classes on how to build sustainably. Some of them will go on to build their own earthships or help build them for others, and some will take the principles home to incorporate into their own communities and houses.
Author Interview about the Writing Process
I am working toward a couple different essay collections. The one this story comes from will focus on growing up in an uber-Catholic, Midwestern family, just barely north of the poverty line. I'm tentatively titling it "Broke as Folk and Woke as Fuck." But who knows where the process will lead me. The title and the theme may change a hundred times before it's ready for publication, and that's okay....
Someone Else’s Secret
Sometimes there’s a secret, like the one I’m going to tell you now, that you carry around for years. Probably because it’s not yours to tell, or not entirely yours. At least that’s the reason you tell yourself for keeping the secret. Like that friend we’ve all had who’s presently thousands of dollars in your debt but continues to accept invitations to expensive dinners and even insists on buying a round for the table, if not the house, and you can feel your eyes about to burst out of their sockets onto his wagyu in peppercorn demiglaze. But you can’t tell them not to accept his round, so you drink it down with a hard gulp, trying not to think about the money you could sure stand to have back.