Jessica Wierzbinski
AUTHOR | TRAVELER
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Special Projects
Broke as Folk and Woke as Fuck
One of my ongoing projects is a collection of essays about about growing up steeped in a Midwestern Catholic culture that was as rich and devout as it was dysfunctional, and the years-long work of unveiling the blind spots and baked-in assumptions such an upbringing created in my worldview....
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 Women on Writing. 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
Poem: Mopping the Floor with Tequila
Here's a fun little poem that was published in the February 2025 issue of Red Ogre Review, an indie press for poetry and visual art run by MA candidates at Lancaster University, United Kingdom.
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....