Jessica Murdock-Whitmore is a writer and an adjunct instructor of English at Northeast Alabama Community College. She has been teaching at NACC since 2007. She is married to Alex Whitmore. He is a CNC machinist. In 2009, Jessica had her first and only child-a baby boy named "Jackson," but they call him "Jack". He is a toddler now and she says that he is "wild as the Georgia woods but sweet as he can be."

Jessica's brother, Dr. Chris Murdock Jr., is a herpetologist and a professor of biology at Jacksonville State University. Her father, Rev. Chris Murdock Sr., is the pastor of Ruhama Baptist Church, and her mother, Patricia Maxwell-Murdock, is the office manager at Ruhama School. Jessica completed her first two years of college at Northeast. In 1999, she went on to complete her B.A. in English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she also did graduate work with a concentration in Creative Writing -Short Fiction. She worked for many years, first as an aide and later as a teacher, in High School Special Education. Jessica did graduate work in Secondary Collaborative Education at Jacksonville State University. She graduated from the University of West Alabama with a M.S.C.Ed. in 2010. In 2008, Jessica began solely working as an instructor.

While at UAB, Jessica studied under the mentorship of well-known authors, Dennis Covington (Salvation on Sand Mountain) and Vicki Covington (Bird of
Paradise). When asked about her creative writing projects, Jessica says that the stories are very much about and inspired by the strength of Southerners and referred to the following quote from a review of Cormac McCarthy's novel, Outer Dark: "There is a strange awfulness about Appalachia that quickens the imagination. Its traditions are unconscious and deep in the bone. It still believes in fate. The world is an allegory and no violence however sickening is ever quite unexpected in the course of a day. It bears its poverty with Celtic dignity and looks at life with the Celtic disbelief in its permanence."
- Guy Davenport, New York Times, Sept. 29, 1968.

Jessica has had a couple of short stories published in small literary and academic journals. Her writing style is very sparse/minimalistic and has its foundations in a dark sense of humor. Her most recent work is a completed collection of short stories titled The Mountain. Jessica is a very attentive, caring instructor who always puts her students' needs first and tries to instill in them a passion and interest for English and Writing.