About

The Person

Photo by RTP Photography

I’m Jessica. I was raised in Southeastern Tennessee and attended New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where I studied gender, sexuality, politics, race, and revolution.

I’ve worked primarily as a research data manager and database developer, in the areas of medical and behavioral research into the sex industry, sexually transmitted infections, orthopedic trauma. and cancer care.

Here’s a random list of things I adore that will tell you a bit more about me.

The Writer

I like to make things up. I like to talk to myself. I imagine nearly everyone I meet in scenarios unlikely to be true, yet amusing to me.

I take many of those things, and I write them down; sometimes I take things from life and “vomit the anguish up”, or try to make them into something prettier than they seemed at the time.

My current writing projects include a collection of creative nonfiction short stories, which may ultimately manifest as fiction, and an epistolary novel. I am also performing research for an autoethnographic text, which consumes much of my time. I’m forced to keep quiet about that for now, for the sake of the research.

The Activist

A proud activist nearly half of my life, my areas of action relate to issues of sexuality and health care, including HIV/AIDS, mental health, substance use and abuse, and multiple sclerosis.

I’ve been involved with sex workers’ rights activism since 2000, and my primary focus remains there.  It’s unfortunate that I need to say this, but all trafficking in persons is deplorable; too often the issues of sex work and trafficking are erroneously conflated. I am active in the fight against human trafficking, approaching the issue from a sex workers’ rights framework, placing emphasis on the lived experience of those working in the sex industry.