Lily Jessen lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and wrote “Driving in the Belly of the Beast” while in tenth grade. She remembers staying up late one night during the summer to write this poem, after walking home from a baseball game and musing about life, as she avoided being run over by cars while leaving the stadium in the dark. When she isn’t writing, you can find her overscheduling herself with theater, needle-felting animals, or singing in her chorus.
