Winning recipient of the 2025 W.S. Porter Prize
Jessica Roeder was born in Chicago and went to school in Rhode Island and Florida. Now a Minnesotan, she lives uphill from Lake Superior in Duluth. She grew up reading almost everything in the children’s library, liberally mixed with Kurt Vonnegut and J.D. Salinger. At thirteen, she retired the socially mandatory softball mitt for ballet slippers, and she continues to study and teach dance. A few minutes dancing will probably leave you feeling better.
Her interest in the circus was sparked by the dance world, a childhood visit to Baraboo, and the work of Edward Hoagland, an early teacher. She drafted many of the stories in The Bones of the Mouse Make the Cat at a writing retreat, and they were influenced, slantwise, by Tom Waits’s beautiful Alice, calliope (kal-lē-ōp) and all. She recommends the photography of Edward J. Kelty and the community of the Circus Historical Society.
Jessica is a 2025 McKnight Writer Fellow. Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in magazines including Ploughshares (forthcoming), Kenyon Review, Threepenny Review, American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Third Coast, and AGNI. Staircases Will Outnumber Us, a prose chapbook, is available from Red Bird, and a poetry chapbook, Trees Full of Walking, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She has been honored with a Pushcart Prize, a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, and a 2011 McKnight Artist Fellowship. She works as a copyeditor and proofreader for book publishers and teaches for Lighthouse Writers.
Jessica and her husband, David Caligiuri, are longtime rabbit housemates and current empty nesters. They are slowly learning Italian. You can visit Jessica at jessicaroeder.com.
Regal House Publishing is proud to bring you The Bones of the Mouse Make the Cat in 2028.
