Jesse Mavro Diamond

Jesse Mavro Diamond (1949- ) was born and grew up in Binghamton, New York to first generation European Jewish parents. She began writing poetry at the age of seven and went on to earn two advanced degrees in writing: one in poetry and one in playwriting. She came out as a lesbian in Boston at the age of 21, to a social and political atmosphere charged with the energy of radical feminism and gay liberation. She began teaching college English courses in 1978 and later became a high school English teacher in Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts schools.

She has published many poems in different U.S. magazines, won national and international prizes for her poetry, had her plays performed in the Boston area. She recorded the only copy of a primary source: The Hanoi Journal by Carol Cohen McEldowney, a radical activist who travelled to North Vietnam in 1967. Working with her archival partner Kathy Roberts, who protected McEldowney's complete writings for three decades, they decided to donate them to University of Massachusetts Boston. In 2007, the University of Massachusetts Press published the Hanoi Journal edited by McCormack and Mock.

In 2014, Swimming The Hellespont Selected Poems 1971-2001 was published by Wilderness House Press. The title poem was chosen by judges at The Tennessee Williams Literary Festival for the short list of ten best poems in the U.S.