Biography
Dr. Theodora Ziolkowski teaches creative writing as an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She is the author of the novella, On the Rocks (2018 & 2020, Texas Review Press) and the short story chapbook, Mother Tongues (2015 & 2018, The Cupboard). On the Rocks, winner of a 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Award, will soon be available as an audiobook.
A two-time Best New Poets nominee, her work has received support from the Vermont Studio Center, the National Alumni Association (University of Alabama), and Inprint (Houston, Texas). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Writer's Chronicle, Short Fiction (England), and Prairie Schooner, among over sixty other literary journals, magazines, anthologies, and exhibits. In the past, Ziolkowski has served as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, Fiction Editor for Big Fiction, and Assistant Poetry Editor for Black Warrior Review. She holds an MFA from the University of Alabama, where she has been honored as a ‘30 Under 30’ alum, and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston, where she was the recipient of the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing. Her debut poetry collection, Ghostlit, is forthcoming from Texas Review Press in Spring 2025.
Education
PhD, Creative Writing and Literature, University of Houston
MFA, Creative Writing, University of Alabama
BA, English, University of Vermont
Research Interests
- Creative Writing
- Contemporary Fiction
- Body Poetics
- The Gothic
- Humor Writing
- Creative Writing Pedagogy
UNK Courses Taught
- Introduction to Creative Writing
- Beginning Fiction
- Narrative Strategies
- Creative Writing Professionalism
Sample Publications
“The Wooden Headdress” Booth, Winner of Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions, 2020
“‘I Wore my Anger Like a Shroud:’” On Poetry, Art, and Shielding the Self,” North American Review
“At the Memory Care Center,” Rattle
“Lying on the patient table, gel on the wand—,” Radar Poetry
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