About Me

Photo by Shannon Brandau

Here’s the 3rd-person blurb:

Jessica Vealitzek is a former communications director for a gubernatorial candidate, an exhibit writer, and reporter. But all of that was an excuse to avoid doing what she’d always wanted to do: write a book.

Her first novel, The Rooms Are Filled, was published on April 22, 2014.

She also writes for Great New Books and PDXX Collective and has been published in the anthologies The HerStories Project and Three Minus One. Her articles have appeared in The Chicago Sun-Times and The Detroit Free-Press, and her posts have been featured on Scary Mommy, Mamapedia and Bon Bon Break.

Here’s the ad for the personals:

I am moved by many things, including, but not limited to:

• Music by Mumford & Sons, Nathaniel Rateliff, Dixie Chicks, marching bands, CCR, most bluegrass, and practically any music that’s live;
• The sounds of guitar, violin, bagpipes, wind (preferably in trees with leaves), wolves, mourning doves, my son’s lisp;
• John Steinbeck, To Kill a Mockingbird, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, In Cold Blood, Anne of Green Gables;
• Bull Durham, Dances with Wolves, Field of Dreams, A Perfect World (I am not ashamed of this Kevin Costner trend), Brokeback Mountain, Braveheart, Steel Magnolias, Glory, In the Heat of the Night, It’s a Wonderful Life;
• Abraham Lincoln, Ricky Gervais, Barack Obama (still);
• The natural world in every form, back massages, Cuban food, genealogy, road trips anywhere;
• And, to a lesser degree, brownies without nuts and the Monster Trail Mix from Target.

You can reach me at ONE OF THESE PLACES.