Erica Jackson became an avid writer after winning the LAUSD’s Sister Cities essay contest in 1981. In 1988 she was selected as one of California’s top 30 prep journalists by the California Scholastic Press Association. She won a Diarist.net award in 2001.
She is a McNair Fellow, Sainsbury/Gatsby Support grant recipient, and two-time History Channel grant recipient. She holds BAs in Literature-Writing from Columbia University and Political Science with a minor in Women’s Studies from CSU Fullerton.
She earned an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts in 2009, where she also studied photography. Her master's thesis, Ivy: A Thirtysomething’s Misadventures in Higher Ed., is a photographic memoir of bureaucrazy, segregation, class, individual persistence, and embodying the truth of biracial identity while being informed daily "you're black!" by monoracial people living in the wayback machine of extraordinary segregation and privilege. Her forthcoming memoirs, Artskool and A Civil Trial complete the MWAB: Matriculating While (Apparently) Black trilogy.
Her photography can be found on Photos By EJ. She is currently "Associate Edica" at Lost Angelene.
