Writer
FEATURED BOOKS
Without You Here
a novel,
from Flexible Press.
2025 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction.
"A beautiful fictional exploration of a troubled family history." - Kirkus Reviews
What Makes You Think You're Supposed to Feel Better,
a story collection,
from Cornerstone Press.
"Each entry is as emotionally rich and resonant as the one it follows, and the prose is understated yet powerful throughout." - Kirkus Reviews
We write to taste life twice.
In the moment and in retrospection.
-Anaïs Nin
ABOUT JODY
Jody Hobbs Hesler has written ever since she could hold a pencil and now lives and writes in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Growing up, she split time between suburban Richmond, Virginia, and the mountains outside Winchester, Virginia. Experiences of all these regions flavor her writing. She is the author of the novel Without You Here (Flexible Press) and the story collection What Makes You Think You're Supposed to Feel Better (Cornerstone Press). She teaches at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, and serves as assistant fiction editor for The Los Angeles Review. To invite her to speak at an event or Zoom into a book club or classroom, please contact her via her contact page.
SELECTED EXCERPTS
Do You Read Me?
TriQuarterly, January 15, 2026
One time Jax came home crying after Damien pelted a baby rabbit with driveway gravel. How angry it made me, but I hid my seething the best I could. I said something like, “We don’t throw rocks at living things. You know that right?” And he just pinioned me with this shaming look of disbelief.
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“He didn’t mean to, Mom."
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Words that grated at the base of my jaw. All the times John apologized that same way. So many things he hadn’t meant to do. “Not meaning to do something doesn’t make it okay. You have to mean not to,” I said. “You have to mean not to hurt people. Not hurt living things.”
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Despite the Loveliest Distractions
Swing Literary Journal, Spring/Summer 2025
Before Anton, a lot of men she met struggled with basic conversation skills. They would answer questions without asking any in return or they would interrupt her and talk over her. Sometimes they'd forget even the barest outlines of herself that she'd shared on the dating apps. Anton asked and answered, listened and remembered. He might not feel the same way about everything, but why should he have to? He didn't need to care, for example, about the structural barriers to student-loan arrangements that broke her heart daily as a financial-aid advisor, when he already cared about what might break her heart.
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He cares about her heart, and that's what they share. Their hearts. Caring about what someone cares about is beautiful. She fell in love with it. This time around, that could be enough. Why shouldn't it be enough?
Swingset Bird
Pithead Chapel, March 1, 2025
Some people can’t tell you enough times how you’ve failed them, and I brace for a litany of reminders. How hard I was on her. How cruel I could be. How I should’ve taken anger management instead of taking my pain out on her. She doesn’t want to hear what it takes to get out of bed with this back, how it’s only gotten worse but it was bad enough when I was working two jobs putting her through school, scrubbing dishes at the elementary school and cleaning sorority houses at the university, and she doesn’t want to hear that she cried about twelve times more than the average kid, flinched at a raised hand. Flinched when I was gesturing, mind you. Like every time my voice notched up, I hit her? I didn’t. Not every time.
CONTACT
Jody Hobbs Hesler is available for virtual and in-person book clubs and classroom visits, speaking engagements, and conference appearances. Query for availability.
For trade publishing inquiries, please contact Jody's agent, Mona Kanin at Great Dog Literary.