Shelley Jackson (born 1963) is an American writer and artist known for her cross-genre experimental works. These include her hyperfiction ''

Patchwork Girl ''The Patchwork Girl of Oz'' is the seventh book in L. Frank Baum's List of Oz books, Oz series. Characters include the List of Oz characters (created by Baum), Woozy, Ojo the Lucky, Ojo "the Unlucky", List of Oz characters (created by Baum), Un ...

'' (1995) and her first novel, '' Half Life'' (2006).

Biography

In her own words: "Shelley Jackson was extracted from the bum leg of a water buffalo in 1963 in the Philippines and grew up complaining in Berkeley, California." Here, her family ran a small women's bookstore for several years; Jackson later recalled, "I was already in love with books by then ..and the family store just confirmed what I already suspected, that books were the most interesting and important things in the world. Of course I wanted to write them!"Lynch, Megan.
"A Conversation with Shelley Jackson"
''Bold Type'' 5.12, May 2002. Retrieved 2007-08-01. She graduated from Berkeley High School, and received a B.A. in art from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and an M.F.A. in creative writing from

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

. She is self-described as a "student in the art of digression". While at Brown, Jackson was taught by

electronic literature Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or Generative literature, algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature ar ...

advocates

Robert Coover Robert Lowell Coover (February 4, 1932 – October 5, 2024) was an American novelist, Short story, short story writer, and T. B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation ...

and George Landow. During one of Landow's lectures in 1993, Jackson began drawing "a naked woman with dotted-line scars" in her notebook, an image she eventually expanded into her first

hypertext Hypertext is E-text, text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typic ...

novel, ''

''."Stitch Bitch: The Hypertext Author As Cyborg-Femme Narrator"
'' Mark Amerika''. March 15, 1998. Retrieved 2007-08-01. Jackson later said that she never considered publishing ''Patchwork Girl'' as a print novel, explaining, A nonchronological reworking of

Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ( , ; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel ''Frankenstein, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an History of science fiction# ...

's ''

Frankenstein ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 Gothic novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a Sapience, sapient Frankenstein's monster, crea ...

'', ''Patchwork Girl'' was published by Eastgate Systems in 1995 to acclaim;D'Erasmo, Stacey.
"My Sister and Me"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', August 13, 2006. Retrieved 2007-08-01. it became Eastgate's best-selling CD-ROM title and is now considered a groundbreaking work of

hypertext fiction Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to ...

. "Patchwork Girl" uses tissue and scars as well as the body and the skeleton as metaphors for the juxtaposition of lexia and link. While working in a

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

bookstore, Jackson published two more hypertexts, the

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...

''My Body'' (1997), and ''The Doll Games'' (2001), which she wrote with her sister Pamela. In the late nineties, Jackson alternated hypertext work with writing short stories (in publications such as ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, ...

'' and '' Conjunctions'') and children's books. Jackson has explained that she "completely ignored" one college professor who told her the key to success was focus, and added that " metimes this means shuttling manically between art and writing and other, more unmentionable obsessions. More and more, though, and partly because of the ease of mixing media in electronic work, I've come to see all these projects as interrelated." During this period, Jackson also did cover and interior illustrations for two short story collections by Kelly Link, ''Stranger Things Happen'' (2001) and '' Magic for Beginners'' (2005). She also illustrated her own children's books, ''The Old Woman and the Wave'' (1998) and ''Sophia, the Alchemist's Dog'' (2002). She published her first short story collection, '' The Melancholy of Anatomy'', in 2002. In 2003 she launched the ''Skin Project'', which she described as a "mortal work of art": a

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) ...

published exclusively in the form of tattoos on the skin of volunteers, one word at a time. Only those participating in the project were permitted to read the entire narrative. Jackson's first novel, ''Half Life'', was published by HarperCollins in 2006. The story of a disenchanted

conjoined twin Conjoined twins, popularly referred to as Siamese twins, are twins joined ''Uterus, in utero''. It is a very rare phenomenon, estimated to occur in anywhere between one in 50,000 births to one in 200,000 births, with a somewhat higher incidence i ...

named Nora Olney who plots to have her other twin murdered, ''Half Life'' suggests an

alternate history Alternate history (also referred to as alternative history, allohistory, althist, or simply A.H.) is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which one or more historical events have occurred but are resolved differently than in actual history. As ...

in which the

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear expl ...

resulted in a genetic preponderance of conjoined twins, who eventually become a minority subculture. The novel received mixed-to-positive reviews; ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

'' called it "brilliant and funny," and ''

'', while praising Jackson's ambition as "truly glorious," added that "All this razzle-dazzle, all the allusions, ndthe narrative loop-de-loops eta bit busy." ''Half Life'' went on to win the 2006 James Tiptree, Jr. Award for

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

and

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures. The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, ...

."Shelley Jackson"
Science Fiction Awards Database (''sfadb.com''). Mark R. Kelly and the Locus Science Fiction Foundation. Retrieved 2013-11-22. In 1987, Jackson married the writer

Jonathan Lethem Jonathan Allen Lethem (; born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His Debut novel, first novel, ''Gun, with Occasional Music'', a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, ...

; they divorced in 1998.Edemariam, Aida.
"The borrower"
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', June 2, 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-01. She currently teaches part time in the graduate writing program at

The New School The New School is a Private university, private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for p ...

in New York City and at the European Graduate School in

Saas-Fee Saas-Fee () is the main village in the Saastal, or the Saas Valley, and is a municipality in the district of Visp in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. The village is situated on a high mountain plateau at 1,800 meters (5,900 feet), surrounded ...

Works

Hypertexts

* ''

'' (1995) * ''My Body'' (1997) N. Katherine Hayles writes that both this work and Patchwork Girl map parts of a female body through links until "body and text become metaphors for each other." * ''The Doll Games'' (with Pamela Jackson, 2001)

Books

* Illustrated by Jackson * * Shelley Jackson (2001). ''Sophia, the Alchemist's Dog''. Children's book * * * *

Other projects

* ''Skin: a story published on the skin of 2095 volunteers'' (begun 2003). This work involves tattooing a single word on each of the 2,095 volunteers. John Cayley reviews Skin in Grammalepsy, "given that the entire story cannot be read as published, this is a text that is maximally integrated with a very particular and unusual but very powerful, ethical, moral and ''mortal'' culture of human reading." * Musée Mécanique, a Web Exclusive * The Putti * Wrestlemania * Hagfish, Worm, Kakapo
Stitching Together Narrative, Sexuality, Self: Shelley Jackson's ''Patchwork Girl''
A Review of ''Patchwork Girl'' by George Landow * ''SNOW'' (begun 2014) * A Field Guide to Shelley Jacksons ''(An Aid to Identification)''

References

External links

*
Written On (and Under) the Skin.
An interview with Shelley Jackson by Rosita Nunes.
Shelley Jackson: The Writer Whose Medium Is Reality from The Quarterly Conversation by William Patrick Wend
Shelley Jackson: The Writer Whose Medium Is Reality from The Quarterly Conversation by William Patrick Wend
How to Unread Shelley Jackson?
by Stéphane Vanderhaeghe

by Stéphane Vanderhaeghe * {{DEFAULTSORT:Jackson, Shelley 1963 births Living people 20th-century American novelists Berkeley High School (Berkeley, California) alumni Stanford University alumni Brown University alumni Academic staff of European Graduate School American electronic literature writers American postmodern writers 21st-century American novelists Date of birth missing (living people) American women novelists American expatriates in Switzerland 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers 20th-century American short story writers 21st-century American short story writers American women academics