Courtney Kersten is an essayist, educator, and author of Daughter in Retrograde (University of Wisconsin Press 2018). Courtney’s essays can be seen or are forthcoming from Prairie Schooner, River Teeth, The Normal School, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. Her essays have been awarded the Bellingham Review’s 2018 Annie Dillard Award in Nonfiction, the Southern Indiana Review’s 2019 Mary C. Mohr Award in Nonfiction, Crazyhorse’s 2022 Nonfiction Award, and been listed as “notable” in the 2020, 2021, and 2023 Best American Essays series. Her work has garnered her a Fulbright Fellowship to Riga, Latvia and residencies with KH Messen in Ålvik, Norway, the Image Text Workshop at Cornell University, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho and her Ph.D. in Literature with an emphasis in Creative/Critical Writing and Feminist Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Beginning in the fall of 2024, Courtney will be an Assistant Professor of English at The University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota. She is currently a mentor with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and a 2024-2025 American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellow.
Photo by Travis Dewitz.