Jessica Kinuyo Bakar is from Northern California and lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. She's completing her B.A. at Concordia University, where she serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Soliloquies Anthology and received the 2025-26 Gabriel Safdie Award in Drama. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Geist, Grain, carte blanche, and The Malahat Review, alongside U.S.-based journals. She has recently received mentorship support through The Quebec Writers' Federation and AWP, under which she began her nonfiction project on the 2023 Lāhainā fires.

selected publications"Racial Melancholia for the So-Called Postcolony" - The Malahat Review (fc)
"Self-Portrait as Burning Haibun with a Content Problem" - carte blanche (fc)
"The Dry Season" - Grain (fc)
"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 Review
"Five Stories About Fire" - Geist (print)honors & experienceParticipant, Teesri Duniya Theatre's Fireworks Play Development Program, 2026-2027
Participant, Playwrights' Workshop Montréal's Young Creators Unit 2026-2027
BIPOC Writers Connect Mentee, Writers' Union of Canada 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
Commendation, The Adroit Prize for Prose 2025