Joshilyn Jackson is an American author born February 27, 1968, in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.^[1] She was graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Pensacola, Florida, in 1986. She attended several colleges before getting a two-year degree from Georgia Perimeter College and a BA in English literature from Georgia State University. She received an MA in creative writing from the University of Illinois Chicago in 1997.^[2] She has written eight novels, which in order of publication date are: A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty; Backseat Saints; The Girl Who Stopped Swimming; Between, Georgia; Gods in Alabama; Someone Else's Love Story;^[3] The Opposite of Everyone; The Almost Sisters; and Never Have I Ever.^[4][5] She has also written the novella My Own Miraculous. Jackson describes her writing style as "Weirdo Fiction with a Shot of Southern Gothic Influence for Smart People Who Can Catch the Nuances but Who Like Narrative Drive, and Who Have a Sense of Humor but Who Are Willing to Go Down to Dark Places"^[6]

This biography of a living person relies too much on references to primary sources. (January 2016)

Jackson is a member of the board of Reforming Arts, a nonprofit which provides liberal arts classes to women in Georgia prisons. She herself teaches creative writing classes inside Lee Arrendale State Prison.