Using Fiction to Illuminate the Truth

illustration of three women in silhouette.

( 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 .

Author

Robyn Rime
Senior Writer & Editor
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