The Heart Folds Early is about what it means to make a choice. As mothers, how do we carry life and death in our bodies and survive with our hearts intact? Jill Christman folds the mournful recklessness of the twenty-year-old widow she was against the backdrop of her later marriage and new motherhood, including the choice to end a half-term pregnancy when a routine ultrasound revealed her baby boy had just half a heart. Available now for pre-order from University of Nebraska Press. To be released: March 1, 2026!

Check out my review of Brittany Means’s Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways.

My new book is out! I’ve been writing essays for over fifteen years, and it’s been a glorious ride, but I’d never put out a collection of just Jill Christman essays between two covers …

If This Were Fiction is a love story—for Jill Christman’s long-ago fiancé, who died young in a car accident; for her children; for her husband, Mark; and ultimately, for herself. In this collection, Christman takes on the wide range of situations and landscapes she encountered on her journey from wild child through wounded teen to mother, teacher, writer, and wife. Published in the American Lives series from University of Nebraska Press September 2022.

The title character of “Mr. Cosmos” is my fifth-grade science teacher from Newbury Elementary School in Massachusetts—a man so wonderful he would leap on his desk and do interpretive dances …

Spinning: Against the Rules of Angels was Creative Nonfiction Magazine’s True Story. Issue #12, 2017. For years, Jill Christman has been waiting for her long-lost lover to communicate with her from beyond the grave. Finally, he walks into her early-morning exercise class, setting her world awhirl.

In teaching news, Ball State honored my work with a group of students dedicated to raising awareness and providing resources around the issue of sexual violence on our nation’s campuses with a 2021 Immersive Learning Faculty Award. If you’re a member of a university community, I hope you’ll check out the details of our project at IndeliblePodcast.com …

“Falling”—a longform essay—won the 2021 Iron Horse Literary Review Long Story Contest and was later released by IHLR released in a beautiful, illustrated, e-single that you can download for free. The essay’s core narrative chronicles the writer’s son’s fall from a sugar maple tree and explores how we navigate the scariest things and most profound losses.

Winner of Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction, Darkroom: A Family Exposure is Jill Christman’s gripping, funny, and wise account of her first thirty years. Although her story runs the gamut of dramatic life events, including childhood sexual abuse, accidental death, and psychological trauma, Christman’s poignant memoir is much more than a litany of horrors; instead, it is an open-eyed, wide-hearted, and good-humored look at a life worth surviving.