B.K. (Kate) Jackson is a writer and editor whose work focuses on illuminating the impacts of the revelation of family secrets. After a career in journalism, during which she wrote primarily about health, psychology, and social issues, her direction shifted toward creative nonfiction as way to explore surprising revelations about her family. Abandoned by her mother as an infant and raised by her father, she learned decades later that she had six brothers and sisters she’d never imagined, and, several years later, that the man who raised her was not her biological father. The discovery of three additional siblings followed.

To help others with the bewilderment of similar discoveries, in 2019 she created Severance (severancemag.com), an online magazine and community to give voice to adoptees and individuals who’ve experienced misattributed parentage. Her new anthology, Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship, is a natural progression of the magazine, featuring literary essays by acclaimed and emerging writers about the experience of encountering unknown close family.

With a late-life diagnosis of ADHD, she also writes about the intersection between neurodivergence and creativity in her Substack newsletter, “Creatively ADHD.”

Kate’s had bylines in HuffPost, The Los Angeles Times, The Sun, SurvivorLit, Whale Road Review, Hippocampus Magazine, WIRED and more, and earned a BA and an MA from UCLA. She’s revising a memoir about maternal abandonment and family secrets. She lives in Milford, Pennsylvania. Learn more at www.bkjacksonwriter.com.