Leslie Jill Patterson (PhD, Oklahoma State University) has published essays, stories, and interviews in Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Texas Monthly, Gulf Coast, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, The Rumpus, Prime Number Magazine, Hunger Mountain, Hotel Amerika, and Colorado Review, among other journals, and in several anthologies, most recently A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (U of Nebraska P). In 1999, she founded Iron Horse Literary Review and continues to serve as Editor-in-Chief. She also organizes the annual Summer 1On1 Program, connecting graduate students studying creative writing at TTU with editors, publishers, and agents. Today, she has a growing interest in social justice literature and works as the case storyteller for public defenders representing indigent men and women charged with capital murder and facing the death penalty in Texas and across the southern United States. Since the fall of 2009, she has assisted defense teams on over forty capital murder cases.  

Website: https://www.lesliejillpatterson.com

Selected Awards

Pushcart, 2024

TTU President’s Engaged Scholar Award, 2024

Inducted Member, Texas Institute of Letters, 2024

TTU Humanities Center, Alumni Fellow, 2023

Pushcart, 2018 

3AM Warrior Award

Soros Justice Fellowship 

Richard J. Margolis Award for Social Justice Writing 

Boone Foundation Human Rights Fellowship 

Able Muse Write Prize for Fiction 

Prime Number Magazine Short Fiction Award 

Time & Place Prize, Bretagne, France 

Everett Southwest Literary Award (judged by Lee K. Abbott) 

Kimmel-Harding Nelson Center Residency 

Writers' League of Texas Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction 

Jacob K. Javitts Fellow 

Selected Essays

“Ballistics,” Fourth Genre 
 
“How to Tell a True Love Story,” Kenyon Review 
 
“Casting Lesson,” River Teeth 

“Against Fidelity,” A Harp in the Stars (U of Nebraska Press) 

“In the Moments Before Gunfire,” Hunger Mountain 

“Study in Self-Defense: Lubbock, Texas,” Brevity 

“No Men Were Harmed in the Making of 78/52,” Hotel Amerika 

“Running,” Sweet 

“Remote Control,” under the gum tree 

“We Aren't Killers; They Are,” The Rumpus 

“On Forgiving,” A Fire to Light Our Tongues: Texas Writers on Spirituality (TCU Press) 

“Mirage,” Baltimore Review 

“We Know the Drill,” Bring the Noise: The Best Pop Culture Essays from Barrelhouse Magazine 

“The Landslide of Trouble,” Grist 

“Writing for Life: How Narrative Law Is Transforming Death Penalty Cases,” Creative Nonfiction 

“When Marriage Is a Tomb Where Silence Dwells,” Image: Art, Faith, Mystery 

“Our Bodies Do Not Fit Us,” The Carolina Quarterly 

“The Work of a Farrier Is an Unforgiving Business,” Concho River Review 

“Traveling Solo,” Quarterly West 

“Girlfriends Solid as Rock,” Fourth Genre 

Selected Stories

“Brace Yourself,” Pushcart Prize Anthology: Best of the Small Presses XLIII 

“Target,” Able Muse 

“The Fires We Can't Control,” Colorado Review 

“Catch and Release,” The New Guard 

“What Manner of Triumph,” Smokelong Quarterly 

“The Break-In,” Texas Monthly 

“Road Signs,” Writing on the Wind: An Anthology of West Texas Women Writers 

“Things Continue,” Colorado Review 

Narrative Law

Patterson has served as the case storyteller or narrative consultant on over 50 capital murder defense teams. Each year, she teaches four to five workshops on storytelling and narrative defense, and often serves as consulting faculty at bring-your-own case seminars. Since 2009, she has taught at over 60 of these Continuing Legal Education clinics, hosted by the ACLU; Advancing Real Change in Baltimore, Maryland; The Center for International and American Law in Dallas, Texas; Deep South Capital Defenders; the Juvenile LWOP Sentencing Forum at the USC Gould School of Law; the National Federal Defender Capital Habeas Unit; the John Marshall School of Law; the Legal Defense Fund; the NAACP; the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys; the North Carolina Racial Equity Network; Scribes: The American Society of Legal Writers; Southern Center for Human Rights; the Southern Poverty Law Center; Southwestern Law School—Los Angeles; University of Texas School of Law; as well as federal and state public defender organizations in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.   

Professor
Creative Writing

Email: jill.patterson@ttu.edu
Office: HUMA 210