Jessica Goudeau

Jessica Goudeau is a journalist, literary scholar, and refugee advocate. Her first nonfiction book, After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America, won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and a Christopher Award, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice book, World Magazine’s Understanding the World Book of the Year, a Library Journal “Best Social Science Book of the Year,” and one of Chicago Public Library’s “Best Books of 2020” and was a finalist for the Writer’s League of Texas Nonfiction Book Award, a finalist for the BookTube Prize, short listed for the Chautauqua Prize, and long listed for the Reading the West Narrative Nonfiction Award. Her next nonfiction book, We Were Illegal, will also be with Viking. She has been a columnist for Catapult and has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Texas Monthly, and Guernica, among other places. She produced Ask a Syrian Girl for Teen Vogueand “A Line Birds Cannot See,” a short documentary distributed by The New Yorker. She co-founded a nonprofit for Burmese refugee artisans in Austin that successfully ended after seven years when the last artisan found full-time employment. She has a PhD in literature from the University of Texas, served as a Mellon Writing Fellow and Interim Writing Center Director at Southwestern University, and a Visiting Professor at Sewanee School of Letters. She lives in Austin with her family and their recalcitrant dog, Roux.