Writer
We write to taste life twice.
In the moment and in retrospection.
-Anaïs Nin
Coming Soon: What Makes You Think You're Supposed to Feel Better, a story collection, from Cornerstone Press, November 2023.
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 both regions flavor her writing. Her debut story collection, What Makes You Think You're Supposed to Feel Better is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in November 2023, and her debut novel, Without You Here is forthcoming from Flexible Press in November 2024. She teaches at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia and reads for The Los Angeles Review.
SELECTED EXCERPTS
Cigarillo Car Ride 1975
Chariot Press, Winter 2022
He’ll open a window, for Christ’s sake. She can breathe, all right. She just has to have a thing or two to say. Exactly like Lizette. They couldn’t sit together on the sofa of an evening without the conversation turning to some character-improving idea she had about him. Those conversations ended the same way: Lizette in tears, Bill saying, “This is who I am. I can’t be somebody else.”
Things Are Already Better Someplace Else
The Los Angeles Review, March 2021
Your Beverly is a smudge of a child. A shadow of herself, but powdery pale so she catches what light there is and shimmers in it. When her daddy pulled up to the curb, she must have figured he wouldn’t see her. When was Bucky ever looking for her? She’s his own child, but you have to force him to watch her nights you work late. His mama’s your only other choice, but she won’t say yes unless you ask him first.
Grown-up Party
Pithead Chapel, Winter 2018, Larry Brown Short Story Award finalist
“Where would you rather be?” He tips his sunglasses out of the way to look at her, and his eyes are as blue as lakewater at night. “If you could pick?”
It’s the first grownup all day to ask her what she wants instead of telling her. She looks closer at him. Scrubby sideburns. Fluffy brown hair. Crooked yellow teeth. It’s really hot outside, but he’s not sweating. “Anywhere,” she says and gives a sly smile.