ABOUT
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Jesse Rowell writes award-winning science fiction and horror. His background in technology, literature, and poetry makes his fiction a delectable treat to savor. I mean, just look at those sexy eyes over there. He uses those peepers to stare at a computer screen and affix words to a blank page. Don't you want to see the world through his eyes?
Inspired by sci-fi and speculative authors Franz Kafka, Kōbō Abe, René Barjavel, Philip K. Dick, Joan D. Vinge, Ray Bradbury, Douglas Adams, Larry Niven, Margaret Atwood, Isaac Asimov, and Ursula K. Le Guin, Jesse's novels and short stories gravitate toward picaresque themes and existentialism. Jesse has been featured in multiple publications across media outlets, including NPR and several literary journals.
Originally from Colorado, Jesse now calls Seattle home. He enjoys writing novels and short stories, and spending time with his wife, two daughters, and dog.
PUBLISHED WORK
Sounds of Summer
I used to know the sounds of a good summer. My lawn chair creaking and sprinklers a’ rat-a-tat-tatting above the shouts of children. Insects buzzing. And my voice, languid as a river, calling out to my daughter.
Whisper House Press - Publisher
Past Adjacent
She thought about the happiness of happenstance, pretending that there was a warm and caring universe that rewarded acts of compassion. Contemptible drivel. The detrobots had changed everything.
Amazing Stories - Publisher
Or Every Man Be Blind
Exhaustion clung to her like a dew she couldn’t shake off. She slumped to the ground, eyelids sinking over an empty world. She dreamed more terrible dreams. Driftwood clouds and the sound of air being ripped apart.
Brain Mill Press - Publisher
I Am Not, Until I Am
I Am Not, Until I Am
Anonymized data, patterns and pathologies, silver bullets in the silver-trance. Live Again had promised it all. This is the part they hide from the public, she thought. Recordings of the terminally-ill hobbling up and down passages...
Cybersalon - Publisher
Second Skin
I Am Not, Until I Am
I Know How This Ends
The mirror had been shattered, our national identity strewn across the southern states like broken glass where we couldn’t recognize each other as Americans anymore, even as former US citizens begged for reunification.
Wrath-Bearing Tree - Publisher
I Know How This Ends
I Am Not, Until I Am
I Know How This Ends
My crewmates have grown mad with misconceptions. They rage at the tapping, fantasize about violence, and pretend that we still have free will. Our free will ended when we trapped ourselves inside this shell.
Shoreline Of Infinity - Publisher
The Stone Piles
The Valens Program
Jesse Rowell's The Stone Piles featured in magazine; the ethics of shame and suffering.
After Dinner Conversation - Publisher
The Valens Program
The Valens Program
Featured in the anthology, a "collection of provocations."
Cybersalon - Publisher
Swans
Cassandra's Burden
They looked like us, but we couldn’t connect with them as they spread disinformation through the tidal flow, their memetic messages turning us against ourselves. “When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear,” we quoted Sirach when they became our enemy.
Ab Terra Books - Publisher
Cassandra's Burden
Cassandra's Burden
Cassandra's Burden
All past and future lives spread out in the singularity like strings on a lute. I see Hector’s life and pluck his string. He has added some inconsequential events to his future but the sound of his note decays into silence against Achilles’s spear.
Ab Terra Books - Publisher
The Worm
Cassandra's Burden
Before Noon
The courage of that stranger, somebody lost to the tattered pages of our country’s history. What is courage but a tourist book of suicide? The cripple holding a gun to his heart, or the intellectual fighting for revolution, one in the same married in death.
The Chamber Magazine - Publisher
Before Noon
Cassandra's Burden
Before Noon
He felt a pain remembering that he had scripted this exact response for caregiver robots if asked meaning-of-life questions. He was hearing himself answer himself through a synthetic voice, a signature of his own in the digital domain.
Ab Terra Books - Publisher
Unbounded
problem breathes down
Tsk Tsk Tristesse
They laughed at the shifting fabric of their bed. “This is space,” she said running her hand over the sheets, “and this is us traveling through space. These ripples are gravity wells which accelerate you toward me."
Ab Terra Books - Publisher
Tsk Tsk Tristesse
problem breathes down
Tsk Tsk Tristesse
The silver rooster pecked at its body and left when it didn’t rise. On subsequent days he returned to visit the body and tsk tsk at the state of his companion, tsk tsk at his own isolation...
Hawai'i Pacific Review - Publisher
problem breathes down
problem breathes down
problem breathes down
Liquid pressed against the geometric curve of time, space and matter. We rest on liquid strings plucked to send us singing words that reproduce images that reproduce words that reproduce...
Cirque Literary Journal - Publisher
Man in the Crowd
Man in the Crowd
problem breathes down
What had he whispered in her ear? It had become relevant now as I was about to be lifted up again. The bearded man stood in the doorway, forever smirking, a specter in both our minds.
Crack the Spine Literary Magazine - Publisher
The Outliers
Man in the Crowd
The Outliers
The tour bus hadn't arrived yet. Soon they would spill through the door, asking for arrowheads and pottery shards. Their graceless bodies stepping on ghosts.
NPR - Publisher
The Wash
Man in the Crowd
The Outliers
Pavement river on the streets below / where cars hum in stagnant repose / like huddled clumps of swampland reeds / unmoved by swimming tadpole tails
Impulse Journal - Publisher