( illustration/Erin Crowell)
Even back in grade school, Kristen Gentry wrote stories. “I always loved writing because I always loved reading,” she says. “But it never crossed my mind to think it was something I could actually do. My family is not particularly artistic. My mother was a nurse, my aunt works in a hospital — no one was sitting there saying, ‘Let’s write a poem’.”
Gentry is still writing stories. Now an associate professor of English and director of creative writing at , her debut story collection “Mama Said” will be published by West Virginia University Press in October 2023.
Read the entire story in the spring issue of the .