Jessica Mesman Griffith is a widely published writer whose work has been noted in Best American Essays. Her memoir, Love and Salt: A Spiritual Friendship in Letters, co-authored with Amy Andrews, won the 2014 Christopher Award for "literature that affirms the highest values of the human spirit." She is co-founder and curator of the blog Sick Pilgrim, a space for fellow travelers, a rest stop for people who have Catholic minds or hearts or aesthetics or attractions and need companions for the journey. Her articles and essays have also appeared in Elle, Image, America, Christianity Today, Notre Dame Magazine, Busted Halo, and Living Faith, among others. Jessica is the co-founder of Trying to Say God: Re-enchanting the Catholic Imagination, a literary festival at the University of Notre Dame. has spoken about spiritual writing and literary nonfiction at colleges and universities, the Festival of Faith and Writing, the Associated Writing Program's annual conferences, and the Neiman Conference for Narrative Journalism at Harvard University. She has appeared as a guest on NPR's Interfaith Voices, CBC's Tapestry, and on various shows for Relevant Radio and Sirius/XM The Catholic Channel. Jessica has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She was then one of ten scholars selected by Patricia Hampl to complete a post-graduate Fellowship in the Erasmus Institute for Spiritual Autobiography at the University of Notre Dame. She is a member of Ink: A Creative Collective of writers on spirituality and religion and is represented by the MacGregor Literary Agency.
"There's so much to love here: two articulate women who are not afraid to share their doubts and flaws as well as their joys and discoveries. It's not that much of a stretch to call this something like an epistolary novel: you'll get involved in their lives. You'll wonder how the story is going to turn out. You'll encounter love and loss, crises and triumphs, but throughout it hear these moving, honest voices--hungry for God yet vulnerable, wise, and true to one another."
--Gregory Wolfe, publisher of IMAGE
"It is hard not to treat this book, so uncommonly honest, almost with reverence, for within its pages lies such personal and raw emotion that treating it with anything less would feel wrong."
--Catholic News Service
"Love and Salt is full of sacramental imagination. Amy Andrews and Jessica Mesman Griffith render things like a walk through a graveyard, a dream about an elevator, and a Neil Young song into something else entirely...These writers are practiced at seeing Catholicly: casting a sacramental glance at the world."
--The Christian Century