Welcome — I'm glad you're here. I'm a poet and memoirist living in Portland, Oregon, and this site is where I connect my writing life to the world. I write about survival, transformation, and the long road back to the self — the things we carry without knowing we're carrying them, and what happens when we finally put them down.
Jessica Plante-Curl (previously published as Ösel Jessica Plante) is a poet and memoirist whose work lives at the intersection of survival, transformation, and the long road back to the self. She is the author of Waveland (Black Lawrence Press, 2021), and her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2017 and 2019, Narrative Magazine, Passages North, the Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2024 Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship and the 2018 Meridian Editors Prize, and has been a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center. She holds a PhD in Poetry from Florida State University, an MFA from UNC Greensboro, and an MA from the University of North Texas. She is currently at work on Oh Honey...You're Not Crazy, a memoir about what happens when life comes calling for the real you — and you realize she's been there all along. She lives with her husband, stepson, and two cats in Portland, Oregon.
If something here resonates with you — whether you're a reader, a fellow writer, an agent, an editor, or just someone who found their way here — I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me through the Contact page or find me on Substack at @thispoetsdesk, where I write about travel, memoir, and other things I love.