JACKIE SHERBOW
Writer, Editor, Publisher
ABOUT
Jackie Sherbow lives in Queens, NY. The author of the chapbook Harbinger (Finishing Line Press, 2019), Jackie's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in places like Sierra Nevada Review, Coffin Bell, Luna Luna, and Day One, and have been part of the Emotive Fruition performance series. Their short stories have appeared in Mystery Magazine and The Beat of Black Wings anthology. Jackie works as the senior managing editor for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and serves on the board of directors of Newtown Literary—the literary journal dedicated to the borough of Queens, where they were formerly editor—and was a participant in the 2018 Queens Council on the Arts Artists Peer Circle. Jackie's work was nominated for the 2019 Best of the Net Anthology. As of spring 2022, Jackie is the founding publisher at THRASH Press. They are a member of Sisters in Crime and The Wolfe Pack.
HARBINGER
Available now from Finishing Line Press. Original cover art by Melissa Calderone.
“I’m not a believer / but I can write about the devil,” Jackie Sherbow declares in their debut chapbook, Harbinger. In these keenly observed poems, both wonder and fear guide the speaker as they explore history, domesticity, mental illness, and religion. From the Salem witch trials to the shores of the Long Island Sound, from Queens diners to the dreams of California, Sherbow’s journeying is intellectually generous and emotionally engaging. I love this collection.
–Monica Wendel, author of No Apocalypse (Georgetown Review Press, 2013) and English Kills (Autumn House Press, 2016)
Jackie Sherbow’s Harbinger is a bold debut that flirts with fabulism while addressing womanhood in America through the lens of witchcraft. The prose is lovely, and their surprising imaginative leaps pull from the mundane world transformations, witches and their familiars, birds’ feet soup, murder trials, beach quartz, and collected talismans from childhood and the present. These poems rest on objects and people and moments until they become enchanted. And readers too will be enchanted by both the dangers and delights of the world Sherbow creates within these pages.
–Emily Hockaday, author of Beach Vocabulary (Red Bird Chaps, 2022) and the forthcoming Naming the Ghost (Cornerstone Press, November 2022)
Reviewed/interviewed about the book by Meher Manda at the Atticus Review, September 2019: "Why does fear speak to us so strongly?"