Joshilyn Jackson was born in 1968 in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. As a young child, her family moved often, following her father's military career. This led her to find a sense of home in books, and develop an early interest in writing.

Jackson initially dropped out of college to become an actor, but eventually found she preferred writing the plays. She went back to school and graduated from Georgia State University with a BA in English Literature. She then went on to earn an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she subsequently taught English, before moving back to the South.

With 10 novels published so far, Jackson has been Georgia's Author of the Year in Fiction twice. Mother May I, hitting shelves in April 2021. Drawing on her experience as an actor, Jackson also narrates her own audiobooks.

In addition to being a novelist, Jackson is a board member at Reforming Arts, a non-profit which runs educational programs for incarcerated populations. Through this program, she teaches writing classes in Georgia's maximum security women's prison.

Jackson currently resides in Decatur, Georgia with her family.