Other Faculty

Megan Kaminski

Creative Writing Lecturer

3050 Wescoe Hall
785.864.2500
kaminski@ku.edu

M.A. (California, Davis)

Areas of Research

Creative writing, poetry and poetics, nonfiction.

Selected Publications

Desiring Map (book). Atlanta: Coconut Books, forthcoming 2012.

Favored Daughter (chapbook). Chicago: Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming 2012.

The Prairie Opens Wide (chapbook). Kansas: La Ginestra Press, forthcoming 2012.

Collection (chapbook). Zürich: Dusie Press, 2011.

Carry Catastrophe (chapbook). Tallahassee: Grey Book Press, 2010.

Across Soft Ruins (chapbook). New York: Scantily Clad Press, 2009.

Poems, Articles, and Essays

Poems published in 6 x 6, American Letters & Commentary, Coconut, Cutbank, Denver Quarterly, Eleven Eleven Journal, EOAGH, Horse Less Review, The Laurel Review, Milk Magazine, No Tell Motel, Phoebe, Puerto del Sol, Third Coast and other journals.

Nonfiction in Denver Quarterly, Dusie, Gently Read Literature and Post Road.

Selected Honors and Awards

-Winner, Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest, 2010.
-Fellowship, Summer Literary Seminars, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2009.
-Pushcart Prize Nomination, 2008.

Faculty Profile

My work explores the poetics of space and is interested in the post-pastoral, cartography, the city, women's history, and the new economy.  In research and teaching I see poetry as a medium for engaging with the world through lived experience, and through the study of literary history, world histories, and geography.  Related research interests include: aesthetics, ecopoetics, feminism, geography, and Marxist thought.

My first book, Desiring Map, explores human possibility in nature through the landscape (both natural and constructed) of diverse regions—from the prairie grasslands of the Midwest, to Paris, to the suburbs of Los Angeles.  The poems consider town architectures, agricultural methods, and other ways in which people interact with the natural world. While in many ways my project continues in the pastoral tradition, I am interested in the tension that occurs when our own very human demands and inconsistencies exert pressure on both the natural and made world.

In addition to teaching and research, I am the founder and director of two undergraduate creative writing projects: the Department of English Undergraduate Reading Series, which features creative writing students reading from their original poetry and prose, and the Creative Writing Student Exchanges, an annual exchange between undergraduate creative writing students at the University of Kansas and undergraduates in other regions of the country.

Website: http://people.ku.edu/~kaminski/

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