Kimberly Ann Priest

She/Her/Hers

priestk1@msu.edu

Bessey Hall
434 Farm Ln
East Lansing, MI 48824

FacultyWriting, Rhetoric, and CulturesFirst Year Writing

Assistant Professor of First-Year Writing
Affiliate Faculty Center for Gender in Global Context

Curriculum Vitae

Biography

Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is a neurodivergent writer and the winner of the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press for her book Wolves in Shells. She is the author of tether & lung (TRP: the university press of SHSU) and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications) which was a finalist for the American Best Book Awards, with new books forthcoming from TRP and Sundress. Her chapbooks include The Optimist Shelters in Place (Small Harbor Publishing), Parrot Flower (Glass Poetry Press) and still life (PANK). Kimberly’s writing and scholarly interests are deeply focused on gender-based trauma, domestic ecologies, ecopoetics, ecofeminism, women’s studies, disabilities studies, classic film studies, narrative justice, arts-based research, and writing for therapeutic purposes. A survivor of gendered violence and an active outdoorswoman, she has participated in initiatives to increase awareness concerning sexual assault, survivorship, and healing through nature and artistic expression. Her literary interests include women poets and storytellers, stories that explore religious imaginations and spirituality, feminist narratives of trauma, migration, endangered species, and rewilding, and travel and nature writing. She has received residencies from Monson Arts, SAFTA, Owsley Fork, and Proximity Writer’s House, and she has served as an editorial intern for Sundress Publications and Black Earth Institute as well as an associate editor for six years with the Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry. Winner of the 2019 Heartland Poetry Prize and a Brooklyn Girls Books prize, her work has appeared in literary journals such as Copper NickelNorth Dakota QuarterlySalamanderRHINOBeloit Poetry Journal, and The Birmingham Poetry Review. Her work has also been selected for Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and will appear in the second edition of the textbook Environmental and Nature Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology from Bloomsbury Academic. She is a member of the Association of Writers and Publishers, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, and the National Association for Poetry Therapy.

Media Mentions

Awards and Honors

Courses

WRA 101: Writing as Inquiry
The study and practice of invention, arrangement, revision, style, and delivery to help students make successful transitions to writing, reading, and researching in higher education.

WRA 195H: Writing as Inquiry Honors
The study and practice of invention, arrangement, revision, style, and delivery to help students make successful transitions to writing, reading, and researching in higher education, specifically designed for Honors students.

IAH 231B: Themes and Issues: Moral Issues and the Arts and Humanities
Human conflict and moral dilemmas, addressed through diverse methods and materials from the arts and humanities.

Publications

Wolves in Shells, University of Nebraska Press, 2025; tether & lung, TRP: the university press of SHSU, 2025; A Home Without Secret or Lies: On Family and Writing Poems of Childhood Sexual AssaultJournal of Poetry Therapy, November 2024; Once You’ve Felt It, You Can’t Unknow It’s Happening, Child USA, 2023; The Optimist Shelters in Place, Small Harbor Publishing, 2022; Slaughter the One Bird, Sundress Publications, 2021; Parrot Flower, Glass Poetry Press, 2021; still life, PANK, 2020

Artist Statement

“I write for audiences, for my readers, not to be a known author. … [P]roud moments come for me when a reader feels companioned by my work. I won’t ever know who all those people are, but they are out there.” –from an interview titled Creative Writing Alumna Talks Survival and Success for the CMU News