I recently completed a PhD in American Literature at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. My dissertation, Utopian Regionalism: The Speculative Radicalism of Local Color in the Long Gilded Age, argues the participation of seemingly conservative regionalist texts at the turn of the twentieth century in progressive socialist, feminist, anti-racist, and environmental movements by comparing them to contemporaneous (more recognizably radical) utopian texts. I am also an activist, educator, and personal essayist, holding an MFA from the University of Nebraska Omaha. My creative work has appeared recently in Longridge Review, Boston Accent Lit, IDK Magazine, Lime Hawk, and elsewhere. My MFA thesis, "Wild Onions," is a collection of interlinked personal essays narrating the rural Midwest while exploring the concept of geographical heritage and the evolving meaning of "home." I currently lives in Carbondale, Illinois.