Naomi Jackson

Naomi Jackson is author of The Star Side of Bird Hill, published by Penguin Press in June 2015. The Star Side of Bird Hill was long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and is an NAACP Image Award nominee. It was selected for the American Booksellers Association’s Indies Introduce and Indies Next List programs. The book has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews, NPR.org and Entertainment Weekly, which called Star Side “a gem of a book.” Publishers Weekly named Jackson a Writer to Watch.

Jackson studied fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A graduate of Williams College, her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in the United States and abroad. She is the recipient of residencies from the Kelly Writers House, Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and the Camargo and Point Foundations.

Naomi has taught at the University of Iowa and University of Pennsylvania, and will be a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College in spring 2016. Jackson lives in Brooklyn, where she was born and raised by West Indian parents.