Jessamyn Smyth

Jessamyn Smyth is a writer in many genres who has been teaching writing and interdisciplinary Humanities (Classics, comparative religion, Holocaust and genocide studies, literature, critical and creative writing) for about 25 years. She has also worked in public health community education since the 1990’s, doing HIV counseling and testing, violence prevention and education, rape crisis intervention, intimate partner violence shelter work, grant writing and reporting, disability justice policy development, antiracist organizing, and much more. She has taught at Middlebury College, Quest University Canada, The University of Pennsylvania, the UMASS Commonwealth Honors College, and elsewhere. Jessamyn’s poetry and prose have appeared in many journals and anthologies, and her books The Inugami Mochi (2016) and Gilgamesh/Wilderness (2021) are from Saddle Road Press. Skaha, Kitsune, and Koan Garden are available on her website: jessamynsmyth.net. Jessamyn was founding Editor in Chief of Tupelo Quarterly, and Founder/Director of Quest Writer's Conference. She has a deep artistic and critical interest in representations of disability and embodiment, and her mixed media visual art has become a life-thread.

Jessamyn is currently pursuing her PhD in Public Health Community Health Education UMASS. Her research interests are grounded in improving health equity and outcomes for both people with disabilities and their care/healthcare providers. She is working with arts-based research, community-based participatory action research, and medical Humanities/narrative medicine frameworks to create interdisciplinary approaches to disability equity education and disabled representation in healthcare. Uncovering and nurturing the critical mind, the creative voice, and the ethically engaged human is her mission as a teacher and a person.