Jerri Bell retired from the US Navy after twenty years of service that included sea tours on HMS Sheffield and USS Mount Whitney, and shore assignments at the Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Center in Lajes, Azores; the Atlantic Intelligence Command in Norfolk and the Office of Naval Intelligence in Suitland, Maryland; the Office of the Naval Inspector General in Washington, DC; and as Assistant Naval Attaché at the US Embassy in Moscow, Russia. She speaks Russian.
Since 2013, she has served as the Managing Editor for O-Dark-Thirty, the literary journal of the Veterans Writing Project. She has published fiction and nonfiction; work in both genres has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She and former Marine Tracy Crow are the authors of It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan (University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, 2017). Her book on the “Golden Fourteen”—the first African American women to serve officially in the US armed forces, is forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books.
Bell earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Fairfield University in 2022, a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the Johns Hopkins University in 2009, and a Bachelor of Arts in Russian and Soviet Studies from Vassar College in 1985. She lives with her husband in Southern Maryland.
