{"id":799,"date":"2026-05-13T15:20:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T20:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/?p=799"},"modified":"2026-05-13T15:20:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T20:20:21","slug":"2026-howling-bird-press-nonfiction-prize-winner-interview-jennifer-jussel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/2026\/05\/13\/2026-howling-bird-press-nonfiction-prize-winner-interview-jennifer-jussel\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Howling Bird Press Nonfiction Prize Winner Interview: Jennifer Jussel"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jennifer Jussel’s essay collection,\u00a0Mellitus: Essays on Up\/Rooting<\/em>, is the winner of the 2026 Howling Bird Press Nonfiction prize. In this interview she discusses the collection’s creative inception, her influences, and hope.<\/p>\n

Mellitus<\/em> will be released this October, and will be available for preorder in June.<\/p>\n

\n

How did your idea for Mellitus: Essays on Up\/Rooting <\/em>come about? What was your creative process like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>The idea for Mellitus <\/em>originated across several years of denial and convalescence in the Latin sense, meaning to grow \u201ctogether\u201d and \u201cstrong\u201d simultaneously. For most of my life, I didn\u2019t write much about diabetes. I don\u2019t want it to be the most interesting thing about me. But when I read work from other disabled writers like Sonya Huber and Alice Wong, I realized nothing I wrote would be complete until I acknowledged my diabetic body as a gateway to a world of not only personal comprehension but artistic inquiry, literary activism, and human connection.<\/p>\n

I began free writing about diabetes in a nonfiction workshop led by Dr. Jill Patterson. She and my classmates saw the contours haunting this book\u2014therapist, mother (who else?), unspoken love\u2014before I did. Once I realized this was a book about how diabetes has paradoxically created both distance and depth in my relationships with my family, other diabetics, and even myself, the rest fell into place.<\/p>\n

How long have you been at work on Mellitus<\/em>? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I made my first attempts at Mellitus<\/em> in the summer of 2023, before I realized it was going to be a book. Between forest hikes and karaoke jams on a writing retreat with friends, I workshopped a very <\/em>rough draft whose only surviving line is the first in the book today.<\/p>\n

I went back to school in part because I realized how much I needed to learn to tell this story. I studied disability theory, especially Alison Kafer\u2019s concept of \u201ccrip futurity,\u201d which asks us to prize the vulnerability that makes us human. Mellitus <\/em>became my assertion that life\u2019s sweetness is an essential byproduct of our decay. From January through May, I wrote the entirety of the first draft, which I revised throughout the summer.<\/p>\n

That was an intense <\/em>period of productivity. But I\u2019ve never been the disciplined, \u201cwrite for an hour every morning\u201d kind of writer. And I think this story has been weaving its way through my nerves a long time. It was months of pure generation after years of repression and rumination.<\/p>\n

Did you face any particular challenges during your creative process?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Plenty! My research required more emotional fortitude than anticipated. The process was so challenging that research shifted from mere support for the book\u2019s narrative to an integral part of its arc. On the page, I grapple with reading clinical reports about deadly processes taking place inside my own body.<\/p>\n

Attempting to trace Dr. S and Nick also forced me to confront the fallibility of traumatic memory. Dr. S was absent from active medical practice websites, social media, and even the Wayback Machine. When I finally <\/em>found her on provider review sites, I gained another layer of empathy for her. While I was struggling to decipher her, she was surviving her own struggles.<\/p>\n

With Nick, I ultimately realized it was truer to my experience to let him remain disappeared. My story is not Nick\u2019s; I never want to presume to speak for him. Instead, it\u2019s enough to know he was real to me, I cared for him, and I am grieving him still amidst his resounding absence. I wish everyone who knew and loved him very well.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Which authors have significantly influenced you as a person and\/or specifically your writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Too many to count, but to thank and recommend a few: Ross Gay, whose writing about pain as an experience intertwined with joy feels truer to my life than any of the purely \u201cuplifting\u201d or \u201cdepressing\u201d narratives often associated with disability. Sonya Huber, in addition to being a kind and generous writer, helped me recognize the art and activism inherent in writing about chronic illness and disability. I\u2019m also indebted to disability scholars like Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Ellen Samuels, and Alison Kafer, who showed me how to embrace disability not only as an identity but a more empathetic, adaptive, and creative mode of being. Alison Bechdel is also a master class in obsession and radical empathy for one\u2019s parents on the page.<\/p>\n

Lightning round: Kiese Laymon, Chanel Miller, Michelle Zauner, and yes, Joan Didion, who remains one of the mothers of creative nonfiction as we know it.<\/p>\n

In a few of your essays you address hope in regard to diabetes research. How has your understanding of hope developed over your life? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Hope to me is intertwined with trust. Unfortunately, many diabetics lose trust after years inside the healthcare system. Everyone I know who\u2019s been diagnosed longer than ten years has a \u201cjust around the corner\u201d story: Their pediatric endocrinologist assured them on the day of their diagnosis that the cure was no more than five years away. I maintain great trust in the power of science. Having started with manual syringe injections and eight finger pricks per day, I\u2019ve experienced amazing improvements in my quality of life through new technologies like glucose sensors and insulin pumps. Recent advancements give me hope there will be a functional cure for type 1 within my lifetime. But I do not yet trust such a cure will be made available or affordable to me while I am young and free of diabetic complications.<\/p>\n

There are a few diabetic activists (check out @thechronicallyillest on Instagram) bringing attention to the problems with forced optimism inside a system that privileges mostly white, affluent diabetics. Assuring recently diagnosed diabetics and their grieving parents that this disease isn\u2019t so bad, that their only concern is holding on to hope, is a dangerous perpetuation of the systemic issues plaguing our community. It allows others to deny us the aid\u2014like school-mandated 504 plans\u2014that comes with the disability label in the United States. Hope for the future remains vital, but more important is affordable insulin, equal access to quality healthcare, and uplifting the voices of diabetics trying to advance real change right now, when many of our lives and rights are currently at risk.<\/p>\n

What advice would you give to family members, partners, and spouses of someone with type 1 diabetes? How can loved ones be supportive in ways they might not recognize?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m immensely lucky to be surrounded by a community that uplifts every aspect of me. You can love and support a diabetic the way you love and support anyone: listening attentively, asking how to help, and growing alongside them. I\u2019m definitely grateful to my husband for cooking me balanced dinners and bringing me juice boxes during middle-of-the-night low blood sugars. But I\u2019m more grateful that his unwavering care encourages me every day to become a more balanced, kind, and joyful person. Similarly, my family has taught me that constancy and advocacy are a means of love. And the friends I consider family have helped me to celebrate my \u201cextra\u201d needs as a natural part of me, worthy of being met. Not all of us get a catchy diagnosis to label our needs, but to love wholeheartedly is to accept that everyone needs extra, in one way or another.<\/p>\n

Do you plan to write more about chronic illness and\/or disabilities in the future?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes! I am currently at work on my second book, a full-length collection of essays that, while still personal, explores the systemic aspects of diabetes. The longer I study this illness, the more I see it as an American microcosm. The diabetic experience encapsulates the capitalist obsession with productivity, the corporatization of the American healthcare industry, and the desire to shrink people with disabilities into something palatable, even to the point of disappearance.<\/p>\n

The book includes more research, interviews, and archival work as I trace the little-known history of type 1 before the invention of injectable insulin. That\u2019s been a trip because I keep recognizing glimmers of myself and other diabetics I know\u2014hard-working, ambitious, struggling, resisting\u2014in the stories of people over a century past. Please don\u2019t hesitate to reach out to me if you want to know more or to support this project!<\/p>\n

What message(s) do you hope Mellitus <\/em>imparts on a disabled or chronically ill reader? What should a person who doesn\u2019t live with those challenges take away? <\/strong><\/p>\n

What I love about creative nonfiction is it exposes the churn of human thinking: always raising a million questions without easy answers. As readers, we come away with our own interpretations of a book\u2019s \u201cmeaning,\u201d but I hope we\u2019ll never give up our questioning. I hope readers of Mellitus <\/em>will remain curious about the questions this book raises. What do we lose when we try to push past bodily or literal grief? How might embracing our vulnerabilities, disabled or not, open new possibilities of love and community to us? In a world that increasingly prizes brute strength, homogeneity, and productivity, these are the questions over which I find myself churning.<\/p>\n

\n

Jennifer Jussel<\/strong>\u00a0is a type 1 diabetic writer and essayist originally from Austin, Texas. She holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University and is pursuing a Ph.D. in English and creative writing from Texas Tech University, where she also teaches undergraduate writing. Her Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated work has been supported by the Vermont Studio Center and published in Radar<\/em>, Booth<\/em>, the Santa Clara Review<\/em>, Cleaver<\/em>, and other journals. Mellitus <\/em>is her first book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Jussel’s essay collection,\u00a0Mellitus: Essays on Up\/Rooting, is the winner of the 2026 Howling Bird Press Nonfiction prize. In this interview she discusses the collection’s creative inception, her influences, and hope. Mellitus will be released this October, and will be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":917,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/917"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":800,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions\/800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}