ALYSSA KNICKERBOCKER

Superpower //creator of characters, maker of metaphors, master of description. high-functioning on very little sleep.

Alyssa holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was the Halls Emerging Artist Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Axton Fellow in Fiction at the University of Louisville, where she directed a literary festival on “time travel” in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, exploring the different ways that writers leap into the past and future in their work. Her essays, which focus on motherhood, identity, and childbirth, have appeared most recently in Tin House and American Short Fiction’s parenting column “Bourbon and Milk.” Her fiction has appeared widely in journals and magazines and she is at work on a novel set in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, where she lived for many years and worked as an environmental educator, sailing instructor, challenge course facilitator, and bus driver. She lives on the Kitsap Peninsula with her husband–a science teacher–and their two little boys, who would love a dog/cat /rabbit/lizard/anything. (She is currently winning this fight and has no pets.)