Karen L. Kilcup

A New Englander with long farming roots, Karen Kilcup is the Elizabeth Rosenthal Excellence Professor of American Literature, Environmental & Sustainability Studies, and Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at UNC Greensboro. In addition to her fourteen academic books, she has published numerous scholarly and creative works in journals and anthologies. Her poetry collection The Art of Restoration (2023) was awarded the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize, and her chapbook Red Appetite (2023) received the 2022 Helen Kay Chapbook Poetry Prize. She also has a second chapbook, Black Nebula (2023).Kilcup's rural working-class background includes a mother who started a building business; its motto was "homes for women, designed by a woman." She spent her childhood among plumbers, painters, carpenters, and stonemasons like her grandfather. She's lived and taught in England and Switzerland; she's mowed fields with an ancient Ford tractor and driven cows to pasture. She knows how to fix a toilet. About seven years ago, she learned how to rock climb, her current obsession, along with running, kayaking, and gardening. She lives in the seacoast of New Hampshire, with the love of her life, Alan.