Jori Lewis

WRITER: CREATIVE NON-FICTION

United States

Winter 2026

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Contact Info

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, Bluesky: @jorilewis

BIOGRAPHY

Jori Lewis writes narrative nonfiction that explores how people interact with their environments. Her reports and essays have been published in The Atlantic magazine, Orion Magazine and Emergence Magazine, among others, and she is a senior editor of Adi Magazine, a literary magazine of global politics. In 2022, she published her first book, Slaves for Peanuts: A Story of Conquest, Liberation, and a Crop That Changed History, which was supported by the prestigious Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and a Silvers Grant for Work in Progress. It also won a James Beard media award and the Harriet Tubman Prize. IG: @jorilewis (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, Bluesky)

PROJECT

While at Nawat Fes, Jori Lewis will be working on a book of essays that examines the stories we tell about the natural and the supernatural, illuminating the ineffable in the world of nature and in ourselves. At its heart, the collection interrogates how we make meaning of the world by reading the land, the animals, the water, and the skies. Using elements of history, scientific research, myth, folklore, and cultural analysis, the collection takes the reader on an expedition through space and time that is mediated by her own observations, experiences, and reflections about the signs we see in our landscapes. Along the way, the collection meditates on themes of colonialism, racism, social and ecological change, and measures the palpitations we feel in the face of heartbreak and hope, desire and distaste, grief and joy. Jori will work mostly on a chapter that looks at our early understanding of science, as encapsulated in the knowledge-making at the world’s oldest university, al-Qarawiyyin University, and the stories about the woman who is reputed to be its founder, Fatima al-Fihri.