Shelley Jackson

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For the author of "The Lottery" and other short stories, see Shirley Jackson.

Shelley Jackson

Shelley Jackson (born 1963) is a writer and artist known for her cross-genre experiments, including important contributions to electronic literature and hypertext.

Born in the Philippines, Jackson grew up in Berkeley, California and graduated from Berkeley High School [1]. She received a B.A. in art from Stanford University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Brown University. She is widely recognized for Patchwork Girl (hypertext), published by Eastgate Systems in 1995, a reworking of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and other hypertexts, including "My Body" and "The Doll Games". In 2003 she launched the Skin Project, described as a "mortal work of art": a short fiction published exclusively in the form of tattoos on the skin of volunteers, one word at a time.

Skin Project "Word"

She is the author of the novel Half Life, published by HarperCollins in 2006, and the short story collection The Melancholy of Anatomy, published by Anchor in 2002, and has written and illustrated several children's books. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Grand Street, the Village Voice, Conjunctions, Fence, and the Mississippi Review. Shelley Jackson teaches in the graduate writing program at The New School University and is a writer-in-residence at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

As an artist, Jackson has done cover and interior illustrations for the writer Kelly Link's collections Stranger Things Happen and Magic For Beginners.