Namesakes by Jessica Mehta

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Namesakes
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You can listen to this piece at the author's website here

Jessica Mehta is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, multi-award-winning poet, and author of over one dozen books. She’s currently a poetry editor at Bending Genres Literary Review and Airlie Press. Jessica is the creator of “Red/Act,” a pop-up virtual reality poetry experience using proprietary software. “Red/Act” aims to introduce more people to poetry, and specifically indigenous poetry, by integrating art with technology in an immersive experience. Place, space, and personal ancestry inform much of Jessica’s creative work.
Her novel The Wrong Kind of Indian won gold at the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs) and at the American Book Fest Best Book. Jessica has also received numerous fellowships in recent years, including the Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship at the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington and the Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship at The British Library in London. Her work has been featured at galleries and exhibitions around the world including IA&A Hillyer in Washington DC and The Emergency Gallery in Sweden. Jessica is a popular speaker and panelist, featured recently at events such as the US State Department’s National Poetry Month event, “Poets as Cultural Emissaries: A Conversation with Women Writers,” as well as the “Women’s Transatlantic Prison Activism Since 1960” symposium at Oxford University.
She has undertaken poetry residencies around the globe including at Hosking Houses Trust with an appointment at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England and at the Acequia Madre House in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In her academic research, she focuses on the intersection of poetry and eating disorders. Jessica is also the owner of the multi-award-winning writing company MehtaFor, which offers pro bono services to indigenous populations and non-profits.