Shelley Jackson is an American writer and artist known for her cross-genre experiments, including her hyperfiction, Patchwork Girl (1995). Her first novel was published in 2006, Half Life. In the late nineties, Jackson alternated hypertext work with writing short stories. She published her first short story collection, The Melancholy of Anatomy, in 2002. Jackson's first novel, Half Life, was published by HarperCollins in 2006. She currently teaches in the graduate writing program at The New School in New York City and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.[14]