Biographical Note

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 prostitute and her client, was raised in a brothel. He raised his own six children, including Bell’s grandmother, on a 160-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. She did not complete middle school, high school, or college and holds no degrees. She has worked as a massage therapist, a cleaning lady, a daycare worker, a nanny, a barista, and a server in the kitchen of a retirement home.

Bell’s writing appears in many magazines including B O D Y, ELLE, Los Angeles Review of Books, New Ohio Review, North American Review, and Rattle. Her translations appear in Mid-American Review, The Massachusetts Review, New England Review, River Styx, and Waxwing. Her first book, Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019), was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, the Julie Suk Award, and the American Fiction Poetry Award. What Small Sound (Red Hen Press, 2023), was a finalist for the Julie Suk Award, shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize, was a finalist for the da Vinci Eye Award, and received an honorable mention in the Eric Hoffer Award Poetry Category. Whoever Drowned Here, a collection of poems by Max Sessner that she translated from German, was published by Red Hen in 2023 and was nominated for a Northern California Book Award. Her poetry has been translated into Italian and Hungarian. She is translation editor at the Los Angeles Review, Events Coordinator for the Marin Poetry Center, Arts Program Coordinator for the Friends of the San Quentin Prison Library, and the Marin County Poet Laureate.