Jill Christman is a 2020 NEA Prose Fellow and the author of three memoirs: The Heart Folds Early: A Memoir (releasing March 2026 in the University of Nebraska Press American Lives Series), Darkroom: A Family Exposure (winner of the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction), and Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood (Shebooks & Audible.com)—plus a collection of essays, If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays (2022 Foreword INDIES Silver Award Winner for Autobiography & Memoir). Her essays have appeared in magazines such as Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Iron Horse Literary Review, Longreads, and O The Oprah Magazine; five recent essays have been listed as Notable Essays in Best American Essays, and "Spinning: Against the Rules of Angels" was longlisted for the Notting Hill Essay Prize in 2017. A senior editor for both River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative and Beautiful Things (a weekly online magazine of micro-essays), Professor Christman teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in creative nonfiction writing and literary editing at Ball State University. Visit her at www.jillchristman.com and on Bluesky @jillchristman.bsky.social.
Professional Experience
Writer-In-Residence-in-the-Schools Founder & Coordinator
2022-present
Senior Editor, River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative
2019-present
Senior Editor, Beautiful Things (a weekly online magazine of micro-essays)
2019-present
Co-Coordinator of the Inaugural Writer-In-Residence Program
2021-2022
Virginia Ball Center for Creative Inquiry Fellow
2019-2020
Burris Laboratory School Future Problem Solving (FPS) Coach
2015-2022
Graduate School Faculty Fellow
2014-2016, 2018
Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Trustee
2013-2017
Assistant Chair of Undergraduate & Graduate Programs in English
2010-2013
Creative Writing Program Director
2009-2010, 2022-2023
In Print Festival of First Books Founder & Coordinator
2004-2010, 2022-2023
Curriculum Vitae
Download CV (PDF)
Education
M.F.A. in Creative Writing
University of Alabama, 1999
B.A. in English
University of Oregon (Phi Beta Kappa), 1992
Research and Publications
Featured and Selected Essays
"Mr. Cosmos." New Ohio Review. December 2021.
"Falling." (Winner of the Iron Horse Literary Review Long Story Prize). Iron Horse Literary Review. June 2021.
"Going Back to Plum Island." In River Teeth: Twenty Years of Creative Nonfiction. Ed. Dan Lehman and Joe Mackall. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico, 2020: 282-305.
"The Sloth." In The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction. Ed. Zoë Bossiere and Dinty W. Moore. Brookline, MA: Rose Metal Press, 2020: 55.
"Indelible (Campus Sexual Assault): A Class, a Podcast, & a Conversation." Essay Daily. April 2020.
"Slaughterhouse Island." In Not That Bad: Dispatches from a Rape Culture. Ed. Roxane Gay. New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 2018.