JESSE SENSIBAR  loves small furry animals and assault rifles with equal abandon and has a soft spot in his heart for innocent strippers and jaded children. He is a product of the mean streets of Midwestern industrial cities. He spent his youth on the shores of the post-industrial Great Lakes in tattoo shops, pizza parlors, corner bars, speed shops, and motorcycle clubhouses.

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Jesse came west to the high desert in the late 1980s and quickly disappeared down the rabbit hole of Southwestern outlaw drug culture. He emerged from that hole in 2008; close to death and with a solid quarter century of hard drug abuse under his belt. He has worked as a mechanic, heavy equipment operator, strip club bouncer, repossession agent, tattoo shop owner, private investigator, tow truck driver, snow plow operator, wildland firefighter, and college English teacher.

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He spends his time writing and promoting the art of storytelling. He helped develop the Narrow Chimney Reading Series, has been a judge for poetry and play writing awards, was a Visiting Author at Arizona State University, and served as the executive director of the Northern Arizona Book Festival. His first full-length work was a finalist for an Eric Hoffer Book Award and he has received awards for play writing and creative nonfiction. His poetry and prose have appeared in over 40 publications. 

 

You can usually find him in the dying Ponderosa Pine forests surrounding Flagstaff, Arizona or in the old barrios of Tucson, Arizona. Otherwise, he is probably somewhere out on the highway, documenting the passing of his rapidly disappearing American West and pondering the fleeting nature of memory, sin, spirituality, and forgiveness.