JUDITH
JACKSON-POMEROY
ABOUT JUDITH JACKSON-POMEROY
Women’s Fiction Author, Academic Publisher, & Gender Scholar
ABOUT JUDITH JACKSON-POMEROY
Judith Jackson-Pomeroy was born and grew up in England in the 1970’s. In her teens, she penned epistolary stories based on small-town life – you know, the day-to-day with friends and drama, drunken neighbors, losing your virginity -- but when her green hair and safety-pin earrings drew jeers and stares, she fled to London in search of a community of like-minded rebel girls. Instead, she found herself nestled in with the Sloane Square posh set after she took a job as a nanny to a titled family with a Christmas card from a senior royal on their mantlepiece. A glimpse at this other life not only heightened her awareness of the chasm between the internal (emotional and mental health issues) and external (access to stuff) life of working- and upper-class Brits, it honed her passion and lifelong commitment to social justice issues and causes.
She left England for the U.S. in the early 1980’s, when an American university took a leap of faith and offered her a (probational) place in the hallowed halls of academia. She jumped at the chance, partly to study social inequality and partly to escape the 1 in 10 on Thatcher’s unemployment line. She found her people there and stayed so long she earned her PhD in the 1990’s. In between all that, she met and fell in love with a man, and they now raise their two daughters together in Boston.
After a 20-year stint as a professor of gender studies, she retired her academic regalia to write women’s fiction that focuses on a re-telling of all she’s learned both professionally and personally (from her own experience, and that of her daughters, friends, and female students). When not writing, she works as Editorial Manager for Frontiers, a mission-driven open-access academic publisher, and as a Research Collaborator at Wellesley Centers for Women (an academic research group committed to social change) at Wellesley College. When she’s not doing that, you can find her canoeing the historic rivers around Boston (with that same man she fell in love with over 35 years ago), raising her daughters (to be intersectional feminists), which includes dancing and singing (badly) with them to rebel-girl music, and cooking vegetarian farm-to-table meals (and forcing her family to eat the products).
She is the recipient of an international fiction writing award, recently collaborated on a #MeToo article for an acclaimed university magazine, and has presented extensively at conferences on women’s/gender issues. Her debut novel, Weight of a Woman, is scheduled for release with Odyssey Book in the Spring of 2023.