Books
Jessica’s widely published in literary journals and has edited anthologies of poetry, stories and essays. She’s won several awards for her poetry, and every time she finds the right words she’s surprised and happy.
At the moment Jessica’s writing from the second story of a little beige house in Toronto. She’s at work on a novel alongside her poems, paintings and drawings.
When you buy one of Jessica’s books, she’ll autograph it for you. You also get a complimentary set of the book’s illustrations. If you want to send Jessica’s book to a friend, she’ll inscribe it for you, with all her love (and a little of yours).
Photo: Paul David Esposti
Books
“Jessica Hiemstra knows how hard and dark the world can be and she is willing to take you there. One minute your warm heart glows with tenderness, the next, not so tender at all… Jessica Hiemstra … strums that nerve as though she were Johnny Cash, diet-pill rapid and ripped, beating the bejesus out of his wooden box of a guitar. Hiemstra has fine tuned that minor chord we bellow when we are all singing that song "loss."” - Michael Dennis, Today’s Book of Poetry.
Jessica writes and edits poems, essays and stories. She’s widely published in literary journals and has won several awards for her writing, and every time she finds the right words she’s surprised and happy.
This item ships free in Canada.
he cozy sequel to Jessica Hiemsta’s beloved Eric and Eloise storybook, While the Forest is Sleeping, stars Beatrice and two cubs. In this simple New Year’s Eve story, Beatrice the bear welcomes her cubs into the world and her friends Frankie the stag, Louie the mouse, Eric the hare and Eloise the fox ring in the new year. This sweet children’s book has a gold and red cover, and rich, screen-printed illustration.
Jessica’s third Eric and Eloise book, Charlie in Spring, features Charlie the duck Eugene the moose, Margie the doe and Emerson the pheasant - and everyone else, too.
While the Forest is Sleeping is handmade and screen printed in Nepal. The materials for the paper are sustainably harvested from the lokta plant which grows in the foothills of the Himalayas. The book is 9” x 12” and hardcover.
Please request an inscription when you make your purchase, and Jessica will be glad to add a name or a note on the inside cover for you.
Written and Illustrated by JESSICA HIEMSTRA
Edited by VANESSA MOELLER
Published by GOOSE LANE EDITIONS, 2011
Apologetic for Joy is a lush collection of poetry from a unique voice whose palette of subject matter ranges from artistic anatomy to dislocation. Hiemstra's poems reveal a sensual awareness and an imaginative escape into intricately woven poetic worlds, rich in sensual detail and metaphor. Her gentler sketches of quotidian moments peel away to reveal an artist and poet whose careful observations of the world undertake the difficult translation to page and canvas.
WRITTEN BY JESSICA HIEMSTRA
ILLUSTRATED BY JESSICA HIEMSTRA
PUBLISHED BY BIBLIOASIS
Painters use the term “fugitive pigments” to describe those colours most prone to fading after a brief exposure to light. In Self-Portrait Without a Bicycle, poet and visual artist Jessica Hiemstra uses the idea of fugitive colour to explore the grieving process; whether her subject is a lost grandparent, a child, language or a cat, Hiemstra renders the fleetingness of life with fine, delicate strokes.
“The poet listens, tastes and remembers, senses afloat, dipping into the past and then surfacing again, drawn by a perfect but fleeting moment.” — Descant
“Hiemstra is masterful as she blends together art, memory and sense.” –- St. Catharines Standard
With references to the art of Alex Colville, Yann Martel, grandparents and children, these are poems grounded in the immediate world, open and completely bare, following the essential lines of quiet. Composed with such clarity and soft humour, what might a writer such as Jessica Hiemstra do, perhaps, with fiction? - rob mclennan
Written and Illustrated by JESSICA HIEMSTRA
Edited by STAN DRAGLAND
Published by PEDLAR PRESS, 2016
Most of Jessica Hiemstra's newest poems were written over several winters. These were hard poems to write. They arrived both suddenly and slowly. To Hiemstra the poems of The Holy Nothing feel like the slake of a hard moment. Haiku poet, Claudia Radmore, says that Hiemstra's poems want to be haibuns. There's something so painfully unadorned and simple about them. Think of these poems as meditations. Includes 17 beautiful black and white pencil illustrations by the poet.
"Hiemstra’s vulnerability and her resilience are palpable throughout this volume, and she addresses hard personal and universal truths with a relentlessly straightforward honesty. It is this honesty that makes her collection so compelling." - Canadian Literature
“Jessica Hiemstra's The Holy Nothing reads smart like Sue Goyette, tender like Wendell Berry and smartdark like Saint Susan of Musgrave.” - Today’s book of poetry
Edited by JESSICA HIEMSTRA and LISA MARTIN
Illustrated by JESSICA HIEMSTRA
Foreword by KIM JERNIGAN
Published by TOUCHWOOD EDITIONS, 2013
WINNER OF THE BRONZE MEDAL IN THE PARENTING CATEGORY AT THE 2015 INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER (IPPY) BOOK AWARDS
Stories of pregnancy, parenthood and loss
“This book, the one you hold in your hands, this book about loss and longing and the half-life of grief, is a wonderful book, one you will want to read, and read again, and share with someone dear to you. This might be a surprise, or at least it was to me, for it’s a book in large part about the greatest of heartaches, the loss of a child. And yet the book is more than that, as the careful grouping of these essays suggests. It’s about unexpected and inescapable loss (What you have is what happened), yes, but it’s also about hope (The wounded past cannot deny the beautiful future), about the search for meaning (The desire to understand), and about love (The possibility of love). It’s also about making…
…As one of the first readers of this book, I asked myself what comfort I might take from these stories, what wisdom. I suspect that word “wisdom” might make these writers squirm. While there may be much we can take away in terms of understanding and insight, it is not the writers’ intention to advise or instruct. If they give advice it’s mostly the cautionary sort (“Expect anything”). The purpose of these essays, of writing them and of publishing them together in this way, is less to provide an answer than to provide an example, less to inform than to explore, to share a story, or stories, that might have a wider resonance. And yet I did feel comforted as I read, more than comforted. I felt happy to be alive and in such company…
… Beauty is the balm sought by both editors of this collection, and beauty is the gift they give us. As Jessica Hiemstra puts it, “Beauty might not be necessary, but we need it.” - Foreword Kim Jernigan
Written and illustrated by Jessica Hiemstra, Eric and Eloise is the beloved story about an unlikely friendship between a hare named Eric and a fox named Eloise. It is the first book in the Eric and Eloise children’s book series, followed by the sequels While the Forest is Sleeping, and Charlie in Spring. This book is the inspiration for the Eric and Eloise Collection.
Handmade and screen printed in Nepal, the materials for the paper are sustainably harvested from the lokta plant which grows in the foothills of the Himalayas. The book is 9” x 12” and hardcover.
If you would like a special inscription, please let us know at checkout, and Jessica will be happy to do so!