I’m a writer, scholar, and educator based in New York City. I write about grief, coercive belief systems, and the long afterlife of trauma, often in hybrid and short-prose forms.
I hold a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University in Wales. My doctoral research draws on Robert Jay Lifton’s work on thought reform to examine how ideology and charismatic authority reshape perception and identity, and how literature and open access to ideas can help restore intellectual autonomy. I also hold an MA in Liberal Studies (Poetry) from Dartmouth College, where my thesis was nominated for the Byam Shaw-Brownstone Award, and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
My book Fainting Bee: a memoir in shorts follows a woman through her husband’s illness and death and the years of wandering that came after, from Reykjavík and Ljubljana to Prague, Venice, and Montreal. It was first published as Cobbled Bridges by Arson Press in 2022, and a revised second edition is coming from RUE in November 2026. My prose poems have appeared in River Teeth, River River, Apeiron Review, little somethings press, and the Dartmouth Literary Journal.
I was a Fulbright Fellow in Creative Writing in Ljubljana, Slovenia (2015–2016), and a writer in residence at the NES Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland, in 2019, 2021, and 2023. In 2026 I judged Best First Book for the Independent Book Publishers Association.
I teach at Southern New Hampshire University, where my courses examine censorship, bias, and power in culture and media. As Head of Youth Services at a public library in South Carolina, I championed young readers’ access to a wide range of books and viewpoints. Before that, I founded and directed a children’s theatre and taught literature and performance as a Waldorf class teacher and teaching artist.
Some of my earlier publications, and my Fulbright, appear under the name Kelley McKenna Rossier.
