Jessica Lind Peterson

Jessica Lind Peterson is an essayist, playwright and co-founder of Yellow Tree Theatre in  Osseo, Minnesota.

Her first book, Sound Like Trapped Thunder, published by Seneca Review Books , is the winner of the 2020 Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize and was named a finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Awards in the category of Memoir & Creative Nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in: The Rumpus, Orion, Seneca Review, River Teeth, Anomaly (formerly Drunken Boat), Passages North, Alaska Quarterly Review and others.

Jessica is the author of eleven full-length plays, two one acts, and one musical, all of which have had professional productions in Minnesota and all over the country. Her plays been called “quirky” “Neil Simon-esque” and “wildly funny.” She is perhaps best known for her farcical Minnesota-themed holiday comedies and was named a “MinneSNOWta Christmas send-up master” by Minnesota Monthly.

From 2008 - 2020, Jessica served as founder and co-artistic director of Yellow Tree, an award-winning professional theater in the Northwest suburbs of Minneapolis.

Jessica was a co-recipient of the 2017 Prometheus Alumni Award from the University of Minnesota, Duluth which recognizes alumni for outstanding artistic achievements. She holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Minnesota Duluth and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University in St. Paul. Jessica is a sometimes adjunct professor and lives in Duluth, MN with her family where she works in the nonprofit sector and plays in the woods.