Jillian Weise was born in Houston, Texas, in 1981. Her first poetry collection, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, is a bold investigation of disability and sexuality. Weise has said of its composition, “In a way, I did not know what it meant to be disabled until I started writing the poems.” The Los Angeles Times wrote, “Readers who can handle the hair-raising experience of Jillian Weise’s gutsy poetry debut will be rewarded with . . . a fearless dissection of the taboo and the hidden.” Weise’s second book of poetry, The Book of Goodbyes , received the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets.
Weise is also a playwright, whose work has been staged at the New York Fringe Festival and the Provincetown Playwrights Festival. Her awards include the Fred Chappell Fellowship at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and the Alan Dugan Writing Fellowship in Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center. She is an Assistant Professor at Clemson University where she co-directs the Annual Clemson Literary Festival.
Visit Jillian Weise’s Website!
“Jillian Weise is a troublemaker. We need more writers like her, more novels like her hilarious, deeply moving, sexy, scary novel The Colony.”
— Brocke Clarke, author of An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England
