Jessica Nordell

Jessica (Jess, J.D.) Nordell is an American writer.

Early life and education
Nordell was born in Los Angeles, California and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin. At age seven, she won a cake of soap in the shape of the Marvin comic strip character for her entry in a Green Bay Press-Gazette art contest. While a student at Washington Middle School, she taught art classes for neighborhood children in her parents' backyard and organized an all-school sit-in to protest a policy that gave students fifteen minutes for lunch. The policy was revoked shortly afterwards.

Nordell attended Notre Dame de la Baie Academy high school, where she was an active member of the debate and forensics teams and the host of Alice in Wonderland costume parties. She attended MIT for two years, where her freshman advisor was Seth Lloyd, now director of the Center for Extreme Quantum Information Theory at MIT. After two years, Nordell transferred to Harvard University and received a B.A in physics. She later earned a certificate in visual art from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the Martha Meier Renk Distinguished Poetry Fellow.

Writing
Nordell was a staff comedy writer from 2003-2005 for A Prairie Home Companion a live radio variety show hosted by Garrison Keillor. While on staff, she co-created and produced the five-part interview series Literary Friendships, featuring writer pairs Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo, Michael Cunningham and Marie Howe, Robert Bly and Donald Hall, and Dana Gioia and Kay Ryan. The series won a 2006 Gracie Award from American Women in Radio and Television.

Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, and Salon.

Nordell's poems have appeared in FIELD and the now defunct Speakeasy magazine. In 2003 she won the first Speakeasy Prize for poetry, judged by Naomi Shihab Nye. Nordell's essay "Another One Rides the Cometbus," an appreciation of Aaron Cometbus's Cometbus magazine, appeared in the essay collection Before the Mortgage: Real Stories of Brazen Loves, Broken Leases, and the Perplexing Pursuit of Adulthood.

In 2006, Nordell cowrote the absurdist family drama "Where's Franklin?" with playwright Jordan Harrison. The play was broadcasted on Minnesota Public Radio.

From 2006-2007, Nordell was a freelance journalist and the associate producer for Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett, a public radio program about "religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas."

Essays

 * Before the Mortgage: Real Stories of Brazen Loves, Broken Leases, and the Perplexing Pursuit of Adulthood (edited by Christina Amini & Rachel Hutton). New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
 * "Home Sweet Prairie Home", Salon, September, 2006.
 * "Positions of Power: How female ambition is shaped", Slate.com (November 21, 2006)
 * "The Visitor, New York Times'', November 2, 2008.