Jessica Kinuyo Bakar is from Northern California and lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She is completing her B.A. in Creative Writing at Concordia University, where she serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Soliloquies Anthology and received the Gabriel Safdie Award in Drama for her play Birthday Sex.Jessica's work has appeared in Canadian and U.S. publications, including Geist, The Maine Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and elsewhere. Recently, she has received mentorship support under The Quebec Writers' Federation and AWP to develop a nonfiction project on the 2023 Lāhainā fires. She was born in 2005 and used to write under a pen name.

selected publications2026
"The WAIS-IV in Heartbroken Young Adult Populations: A Selected Review" - Hippocampus Magazine
"Litmus" - The Maine Review
"An Abbreviated Inventory of Lost Places" & "Free Recall" - Soliloquies Anthology 30.2 (print)
"SANDSBERG" - The /temz/ Review
"Catch and Release" - The Penn Review2025
"Five Stories About Drowning" - the Veg (print)
"Five Stories About Fire" - Geist (print)
"F*cking on a four-point scale" - Maybe Mag (print)
Interview with Ann-Marie MacDonald - Quist Literary
"Security Question" - Ahoy Literary (print), reprinted in JAKE2024
"Wasted Potential" - Quist Literary
"Unsent Postcards" - Nifty Lit
"Eight Letters I Won't Send" - Eunoia Review
"I read an essay yesterday about the Kinsey scale" - Talon Review
"time-space compression (at the alameda county fair)" - The Imagisthonours & experience
Editorial Intern, yolk literary 2026
Winner, 2025-2026 Gabriel Safdie Award in Drama
Co-Editor-in-Chief of Soliloquies Antholoy 31st Edition 2026-2027
CNF Mentee, AWP Writer to Writer Program 2026
CNF Mentee, Quebec Writers Federation Mentorship Program 2026
Adjudicator, Regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards 2025
Commendation, The Adroit Prize for Prose 2025
Prose Mentor, Incandescent Summer Studio 2024
CNF Mentee, The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship 2023
National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, 2 Gold Medals in Personal Essay/Memoir 2023