I Love You. You Have Nice Hands

Lesley Jenike’s first collection of essays, The City of Toys, will be published as part of The Ohio State University Press’s 21st Century Essays series in March 2026. Her individual essays have been published in West Branch, Image, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, and many other journals, and her essay “The Souls of Song,” originally published in the Bennington Review, was named a Notable Essay in 2003’s Best American Essays. Jenike has been awarded Individual Excellence Awards by the Ohio Arts Council in poetry, creative nonfiction, and criticism, and fellowships and residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. She is Professor of Writing, Literature, and Philosophy at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio, where she lives with her husband and their two children.