“Not only is Jesse Goolsby one of the very rare authors who writes with authoritative insight into the warfare of the 21st century, he does so with an even deeper insight into the universal human condition. Goolsby’s real subject, always, is the profound yearning for connection, for identity, that drives us all.”

Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

Jesse Goolsby is an Air Force officer and the author of the novel I’d Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), winner of the Florida Book Award for Fiction and long-listed for the Flaherty-Duncan First Novel Prize. His fiction and essays have appeared widely, to include The Literary Review, EPOCH, The Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, Salon, and Pleiades. He is the recipient of the Richard Bausch Short Story Prize, the John Gardner Memorial Award in Fiction, and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. His work has been listed as notable in both Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories, and selected for Best American Mystery Stories. He serves as Fiction Editor for the literary journal War, Literature & the Arts

Goolsby holds an English degree from the United States Air Force Academy, a Masters degree in English from the University of Tennessee, and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Florida State University. He was raised in Chester, California, and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

Organizations of Interest

WRITING:

The Author’s Guild

Association of Writers & Writing Programs

US Air Force Academy English & Fine Arts Department

University of Tennessee Creative Writing

Florida State University Creative Writing

Military Writers Society of America

Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences

VETERANS:

The Telling Project

Words After War

Homes for our Troops

Fisher House Foundation

Blue Star Families

A FEW FAVORITES:

Philip Hartigan

Donna Mintz 

Christian Bradley West

Adrienne Outlaw

Deftones

Shelby Lynne

The Tragically Hip

San Francisco 49ers

San Francisco Giants

Sacramento Kings

Lassen National Forest