It’s not (really) a secret: Jess Cannon is the fiction pseudonym of Jessica Goudeau, whose first two narrative nonfiction books, After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America (Viking, 2020) and We Were Illegal: Uncovering a Texas Family’s Mythmaking and Migration (Viking, 2024), received many accolades, including the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, a Christopher Award, the Writers League of Texas Nonfiction Book Prize, and being named a finalist for the LA Times Biography Book Prize; they were both New York Times’ Editors’ Choice books. She has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, and many other publications; she was a producer for short documentaries distributed by The New Yorker and Teen Vogue. She has a PhD in Literature from the University of Texas and teaches Fiction and Nonfiction in the Maslow Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University. She is the co-host with Christine Renee Miller of “The Beautiful and Banned” podcast.