User:Scribegrrl
Author of historical and modern fiction; 'independent scholar'. Member of the WikiProject Women in Red.
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Jess Wells (born January 21, 1955) is an American author of modern realism, historical fiction and magical realism. She blogs on under-represented women in history.
Early life
Wells was born in Lansing, Michigan and raised in Jackson, Michigan where, at 17, she had an after-school position as a reporter for the Jackson Citizen Patriot. She competed in high school debate and extemporaneous speaking and participated in local theater. Wells attended the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. She taught school briefly as a volunteer at a Catholic school in Harlan, Kentucky and was a reporter at the Lansing State Journal. Wells worked for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in Washington for a summer while considering a career in the law, but after graduating college early, she left the U.S. to tour Europe alone. She settled in squats in London to write, where she had a relationship with the comic Kevin McAleer and lived with him in Barcelona and Dublin, before moving to be a short-order cook in Amsterdam. After more than three years in Europe, she returned to the United States in 1979, settling in San Francisco CA.
Career:
Wells participated in the foundational years of lesbian and feminist publishing during the time of second-wave feminism in the 1980 and 1990s beginning with an article in Spare Rib Magazine on the herstory of prostitution, which she subsequently published as a book with Shameless Hussy Press in 1982 as A Herstory of Prostitution in Western Europe.
Her short stories have appeared in more than four dozen anthologies and journals, including those from the University of Wisconsin Press, Alyson Books, Firebrand Books, Arsenal Pulp Press, Simon & Schuster, Papier Mache Press, Harrington Park Press, Wising Up Press, New Millennium Writings, Owen Wister Review and Chronicle Books. She is included in the Encyclopedia of Sci-Fi Writers as well as Lesbian Culture: An Anthology
Wells edited several anthologies including Lesbians Raising Sons (Alyson Publications, 1997), and HomeFronts: Controversies in the Non-traditional Parenting Community (Alyson Books, 2000), addressing the stereotypes and social pressure on lesbian and gay families, both of which were finalists for the Lambda Literary Award. She also edited several volumes of lesbian erotica, as well as producing her own volume of lesbian erotica, The Price of Passion (Firebrand Books,1999).
In 2007, Wells produced her first piece of historical fiction, The Mandrake Broom, (Firebrand Books, 2007) which dramatizes the fight to save medical knowledge during the witch-burning times in Europe 1465-1540. This novel imagines a group of women carrying the work of Trotula to midwives and healers throughout Europe and includes as characters the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum and the scientist Paracelsus.
A Slender Tether, (Fireship Press, 2013) imagines the early years of Christine de Pizan, an intellectual of the Middle Ages and arguably Europe’s first feminist. It is a novel in three linked stories and ponders questions of ambition, disillusionment, and identity.
Straight Uphill: A Tale of Love and Chocolate (Cortero/Fireship Press, 2020), imagines five generations of women chocolatiers in a small Italian village, including their travails in WWI and WWII.
Awards and recognition:
2020: Bronze Winner for Adult Fiction/Romance for Foreword Reviews INDIES Award
2009: Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Hall of Fame
2008: Finalist for Lambda Literary Award in Women’s Fiction for The Mandrake Broom
2007: San Francisco Arts Commission Grant for Literature
2001: Finalist for Lambda Literary Award for Love Shook My Heart II
2000: Finalist for Lambda Literary Award for Home Fronts: Controversies in the Non-Traditional Parenting Community
1997: Finalist for Lambda Literary Award for Lesbians Raising Sons
1986: Excellence in Journalism, Lebhar-Friedman Publishing
Personal life:
Wells, bisexual, was involved with women for 23 years, becoming a single-mother-by-choice via donor insemination. Her son (name withheld) was born in 1994. She worked in Silicon Valley in marketing to support her family, has lived in San Francisco since 1979 and is now married to a man who is a singer-songwriter (name withheld).