Laura Jackson, a lifelong West Virginian, holds an MFA from Chatham University in Pittsburgh. Her work has appeared in many places, including Terrain, Brevity, and more, and she writes regularly for Wonderful West Virginia and West Virginia Living magazines. Laura's essay, "The Imperfect Aquarist" was listed as notable in Best American Essays 2021. She works at West Virginia University as a research writer, rescues homeless animals, and spends time with her sons on mountains and in rivers.

"West Virginia is a complicated place. Sure, it's legal to eat road kill (though that's true of California, as well), but despite its bad reputation, its people have a deep connection to the land that Jackson explores here to great emotional and comedic effect." --Booklist

"Essayistic and investigative, yearning and reaching, Laura Jackson's Deep & Wild lurks in the dark and deep to clutch at treasures beneath. An examination of the self intersected within small unknowns, there is nothing small that is not significant. This is a cultural reckoning and illumination, a compilation of layers of time and place alongside hidden and invisible losses and epiphanies, Jackson writes with the brilliant meanderings of a true essayistic mind, taking her time, leading us into the 'dark eyes' of what she witnesses inwardly as we watch." --Jenny Boully, author of Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life

"In prose reminiscent of writers like Susan Orlean and Annie Dillard, but with a fresh and exuberant voice all her own, Jackson conjures her beloved West Virginia in prose equal parts hilarious and heart-wrenching. Jackson shatters Mountain-Dew-hillbilly stereotypes (and takes down fancy-pants-ers like Bette Midler, who spread such Hollywood-centric nonsense on social media) to show the true, complicated, deeply-rooted truth of Appalachia--a place, Jackson writes, 'of beauty and misery . . . of people who worship nature and people who tear it apart.' Weaving personal narrative and a whiplash wit with deep research, Jackson brings readers into her world where rage-filled but helpless crawdads, shy rattlesnakes, less-than-bucolic country roads, and, especially, the lowly opossum--a creature, Jackson writes, 'an exhausted God might have thrown together . . . (from) leftover parts'--abide. I would declare, in 2024, that Laura Jackson be dubbed one of the official voices of West Virginia. There is no one writing with so much love, insight, humor, and heart, about this magical place she and so many of us call home." --Lori Jakiela, author of They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So

"Laura Jackson's Deep & Wild stretches beyond the cliches of possums, moonshine, and John Denver's country roads to fully embrace West Virginia's contradictions, its beauty, and its wild wonder. Jackson's essays are hilarious, insightful, and wise, and will have you reading along with a wide grin." --Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire

Publisher: Autumn House Press

Pub date: 2024-10-18

Length: 196 pages