Books & Essays
Fiction and narrative nonfiction
Fiction
How to Un-Murder Your Life is a speculative thriller about Goldie Bird, a canceled celebrity chef who has lost everything. So when a tech billionaire offers her a paycheck and a comeback to cook at his remote Sonoma estate, she says yes. The comeback comes at a price she never sees coming.
Two more novels in progress.
Essays & features
(HER)OICS
“The Money Tree”
During the 2020 lockdown, I started confiding in a digital assistant while seeking advice on how to save my dying money tree, Gatsby. “The Money Tree” is a personal essay about loneliness, hope, and eventually holding a funeral for a houseplant. It appears in (HER)OICS: Women’s Lived Experience During the Coronavirus Pandemic (Pact Press/Regal House, 2021), which BuzzFeed named one of 18 new small-press books you won’t want to put down.
Fishing for Answers: The Truth About Your Fish
Wild-caught or farm-raised: which fish is actually better for you and the ocean? To find out, I traveled to La Paz, Mexico, and swam inside an open-ocean fish farm in the Sea of Cortez, among kanpachi the locals call “pez fuerte,” or strong fish. The answer surprised me: “wild vs. farmed” turns out to be the wrong question. Originally published on LIVESTRONG in 2018, with a companion documentary I scripted and narrated.
Speaking
SXSW · Create & Cultivate · BinderCon
Author bio
Jess Barron writes fiction and narrative nonfiction. Her debut novel, How to Un-Murder Your Life, is a speculative thriller about a canceled celebrity chef. Her essay ‘The Money Tree,’ about a relationship forged with a digital assistant during the 2020 lockdown, appears in (HER)OICS: Women’s Lived Experience During the Coronavirus Pandemic (Pact Press/Regal House), which BuzzFeed named one of 18 new small-press books you won’t want to put down. Her bylines include Wired, Fortune, and Entrepreneur.
From Santa Monica to Silicon Valley, she has led digital content and editorial teams at Yahoo!, LIVESTRONG, Headspace, and SimplePractice. From the ages of thirteen to twenty-three, she worked in the low-tech kitchen of her family’s half-century-old Italian restaurant in Massachusetts, where she shucked roughly 24,000 oysters, was twice locked in the walk-in cooler, and learned never to touch her face after chopping pepperoncini. She lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband and their English Lab, Star.
Short bio
Jess Barron writes fiction and narrative nonfiction. Her debut novel, How to Un-Murder Your Life, is a speculative thriller about a canceled celebrity chef. Her essay ‘The Money Tree’ appears in (HER)OICS (Pact Press/Regal House), and her bylines include Wired, Fortune, and Entrepreneur. A digital content leader who once shucked 24,000 oysters in her family’s restaurant, she lives in Palo Alto with her husband and their English Lab, Star.
Follow
Newsletter signup is omitted until Jess chooses a provider and is ready to send regularly.