Home of Writer Jonathan Jackson Jr.
Fiction - poetry

"I write to resurrect what memory inherits—the places that maps forget, the stories that bodies remember." - J. Jackson
Home of Writer Jonathan Jackson Jr.

"I write to resurrect what memory inherits—the places that maps forget, the stories that bodies remember." - J. Jackson
Jonathan Jackson is a native of Youngstown, Ohio. He was a recipient of a 2025 Literary Support Award from The Boston Writers of Color. Jackson’s creative nonfiction has appeared in Blavity. A poet and songwriter, Jackson studied Music Business at Columbia College Chicago. In 2020, Jackson self-published his debut poetry collection, In Not So Many Words. In 2021 Jackson began teaching Creative Writing with Community Works, an arts enrichment nonprofit in New Orleans, where he now serves as Program Engagement Manager. Jackson is currently working on his debut novel. Connect on IG: @_jonnnyj
As a Black American writer, I explore the shared epistemologies of my ancestral lineage through what I term 'Black Spiritual Realism.' Shaped by The Black Church and the breadth Black American music, my fiction examines how the mundane and mystical interweave in Black American life. This intersection (which is rooted in Kongo cosmology that came particularly to the South) allows both worlds to exist simultaneously as the warp and weft of Black American reality. My stories traverse this boundary, known in Kikongo as the 'Kalunga river', continuing the tradition established by Toni Morrison and other canonical Black writers. None influenced me more than Randall Kenan, whose work granted me permission to walk boldly in the Black American literary tradition without apology for craft or form.
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