Jac Jemc
Fiction
San Diego, CA
Jac Jemc is the author of four books of fiction. Most recently, her story collection, False Bingo, received the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award and longlisted for The Story Prize. Her novel The Grip of It was released from FSG Originals (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) in 2017, receiving starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and Library Journal, and recommended in Entertainment Weekly, O: The Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire, Esquire, W, and Nylon. Jemc is also the author of My Only Wife (Dzanc Books), named a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award and A Different Bed Every Time (Dzanc Books), named one of Amazon's Best Story Collections of 2014. A work of historical fiction called Total Work of Art will be released in 2022 also from FSG x MCD. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming from Guernica, LA Review of Books, Crazyhorse, The Southwest Review, Paper Darts, Puerto Del Sol, and Storyquarterly, among others. Jemc is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at University of California San Diego and has completed residencies at the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Hald: The Danish Center for Writers and Translators, the Vermont Studio Center, Thicket, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She plans to use this visit to Ragdale to make progress on a novel about the decline in human contact during the rise of online commerce.
Featured Work
Excerpt of Default, a story from Falso Bingo
Story by Jac Jemc
Every memory twisted by revision. Saying grace in the drive-thru. Bright sleep with the TV screen shining an ice rink. The way his language always blurred away from promise. A pink cassette player I tried to keep, but he insisted I give to my sister. Honor roll notices from the newspaper mailed to me, like he could teach me my own life, too. Random news articles tucked in—always something I knew about, but a week later, after it had already changed. Batteries not included. No cash for my textbooks, but an invitation to watch the pay-per-view fight on Saturday night.