BIO

Francesca Bell was born in Spokane, Washington into a family with deep, hardscrabble roots in the Northwest. Her maternal great-grandfather, the son of a Cherokee prostitute and her client, was raised in a brothel. Four of her maternal grandmother’s five siblings were born on the Yakima Indian Reservation before the family settled in 1910 on a 360-acre homestead in Plummer, Idaho. On her father’s side, the Norwegian Wikum family, when traced 700 years back, was already renowned for its spectacularly heavy drinking. The hard living continued in America where the clan was referred to around Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho as “the fighting Wikums.”

Bell was raised in Washington and Idaho and settled as an adult in California with her husband, Patrick Bell. She did not complete middle school, high school, or college and has no degrees or credentials of any kind.

Her poems have been published in many journals including RATTLE, North American Review, 5 AM, MARGIE, The Chattahoochee Review, CALYX, Poet Lore, Slipstream, Nimrod, and The Sun. A short story was published in Asylum Annual. Her poem “Making You Noise” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Also to her credit are three luminous and eccentric children, a half-trained beagle, and some very nice blackberry jam.