Teaching Philosophy

I love learning and creative collaboration because I think of the space we inhabit as alive, noisy, unflinching. My pedagogy is born from the nexus of activism, art, and social change. I believe writing is a socially vital artistic practice that vibrates culture at its edges, asks the best questions, refuses easy answers, and opens up possibility portals. I hope we can reinvent everything rather than repeat what has inscribed us.

Educational Background

• PhD, War, Sexualities, and Literature, University of Oregon
• BA, English, University of Oregon

Areas of Expertise

• Gender Studies
• Fiction
• Novel and Global Conflict
• Ecofiction
• Nonfiction
• War/Art/Gender
• Film Studies

Meaningful Action in the World

For me, to step into the life practice of “being a writer” means to create and commit your creative labor to your community, to improve and sustain access to disenfranchised people and groups, and to work for social change and improvement in the environments you inhabit. To that end I focus my non-academic labor in correctional facility programs, programs that serve those with housing insecurity (particularly for teens and youth), and rehabilitation programs. I am the founder of the Corporeal Writing Creative Labs in Portland, Oregon.

Pronouns: She/her and They/them.

Languages: French, German

Publications

Thrust, Riverhead, 2022

Verge, a short story collection, Riverhead, 2021

The Misfit’s Manifesto, TED Books/Simon and Schuster, 2020

The Book of Joan, Harper Books, 2017

The Small Backs of Children, Harper Books, 2016

The Chronology of Water, Hawthorne Books, 2011