Recent Events: 

Presenting at the 2018 GSE conference at the University of Arkansas. My presentation was titled “Dumbing Down Nature: How the Mythology of an Unintelligent Nature Supports Systems of Power and Abuse in Jeff VanderMeer’s Area X.” I’m pictured below with Chloe McCrea, who gave a great presentation on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. 

Discussing Solar by Ian McEwan at the “Boom or Bust: A Collection and Study of Energy Narratives,” NEH-funded book club in Midland, TX!

On March 24, Kristen hosted visiting author Joe Baumann as part of the Evolving Voices Reading Series, organized by UT-Permian Basin’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta and funded by the UT-Permian Basin English Department.

Joe Baumann possesses a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including Tulane Review, Hawai’i Review, Jelly Bucket, Folio, and others, and is forthcoming in Kestrel, The Radvocate, and West Trade Review. He was recently nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and inclusion in the 2016 edition of Best American Short Stories. The editor-in-chief of The Gateway Review: A Journal of Magic Realism, he teaches creative writing and literature at St. Charles Community College in Cottleville, Missouri.

Check out his beautiful flash piece “Sally the Immortal” at matchbook magazine.

 

SAFTA Reading Series, February 7, 2016

In February, Kristen traveled to Knoxville, TN and read two original pieces: “The Circle of My Throat is Empty of Words” and “A Telling of Things That Happen Here As They Do In All Places.”  Many thanks to Emily Capettini and the Sundress Academy for the Arts for organizing this lovely event.