Author: Jess Zafarris

Jess Zafarris is the author of Once Upon a Word: A Word-Origin Dictionary for Kids. She is also an award-winning innovator of digital content and marketing solutions and a prolific online and print journalist, having served as the Executive Director of Marketing & Communications for Gotham Ghostwriters. Before that, she served as Digital Content Director and Content Strategist for Writer’s Digest and Script, and she still occasionally writes for WD. Her nine years of experience in digital and print content direction and marketing include such roles as editor-in-chief of HOW magazine and online content director of HOW and PRINT magazine, as well as writing for the The Hot Sheet, the Denver Business Journal, ABC News, and the Memphis Commercial Appeal. She has a bachelors in English Literature (with minors in Arabic and Anthropology) from DePaul University and a masters in Journalism & Mass Communications from the University of Colorado Boulder. She spends much of her spare time researching curious word histories and writing about them at UselessEtymology.com. Follow her at @jesszafarris or @uselessety on Twitter, or on Instagram at @uselessetymology.