Jessica Walker is an artist and author whose debut illustrated young adult novel, The Secret Astronomers (2025), is set in her native Appalachia. Handwritten over the pages of a 19th-century astronomy textbook, the epistolary novel unfolds through the notes, drawings, and ephemera of two anonymous teenagers who discover the book in their rural West Virginia library. A multidisciplinary artist, Walker has exhibited internationally and her work is held in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Research Library, Yale University’s Haas Family Arts Library, and the University of Washington Art Library. She is also the illustrator of the Baby Feminists board book series. Walker is an Associate Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons School of Design and lives in Brooklyn.
