Biography

J. Indigo Eriksen is the Director of Faculty Professional Development and former English professor at Northern Virginia Community College. Before NOVA, Indigo taught writing at Blue Ridge Community College. She holds a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric from George Mason University, an MA in Comparative Literature from San Francisco State University, an MFA in Writing from Mills College, and a BA in Environmental Studies from Lewis & Clark College.

Raised in Colorado and Virginia, Indigo is a 2024 Writing the Land poet with The Nature Conservancy’s Piney Grove Preserve, a 2021 The Inner Loop writer-in-residence at the Woodlawn Pope-Leighey House, 2020 fiction winner of the Inner Loop-District Fray Writing Contest, and recipient of the 2019 Mary Roberts Rinehart prize in nonfiction from GMU. Her work has appeared in The Northern Virginia Review, Scratching Against the Fabric, Endlessly Rocking, TYCA-SE Journal, District Fray and Texas Review.  Indigo received the 2026 TYCA-SE Cowan Award for Teaching Excellence; was a 2024 AACC Faculty Member of the Year Top 3 Finalist; VCCS Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence nominee; SCHEV Outstanding Faculty Nominee; and recipient of a 2024 Innovation Grant to support The NOVA Outdoors Project, which taught community college students how to backpack.