Jessi Jaraki is a library professional, community activist, and creative based in Lexington, Kentucky. She volunteers for a interpersonal violence hotline and has had work published in Youth Communications and The Nation.
As someone of Appalachian settler/Puerto Rican/Quebecker/Lebanese/Ojibwe descent, Jessi Jaraki is not entirely a person of color, but she is unequivocally a colorful person. She is perhaps most aptly described as an off-white American Street Rat. Adopted from foster care at a young age, Jessi Jaraki has long been interested in questions of identity, belonging, and intergenerational trauma, which inform her work.
Jessi Jaraki graduated summa cum laude with dual degrees in English, Environmental studies, and International film studies from the University of Kentucky, where she received the competitive Presidential Scholarship, Gaines Fellowship in the Humanities, Oswald Undergraduate Research Prize, and the Danztler-Danztler award for the most outstanding English student of the class of ’24.
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