After many years as an English professor in Georgetown, Kentucky, Kristin Czarnecki is Executive Director of the Rockport Art Association & Museum in Rockport, Massachusetts. If you’re ever in the area, please visit this storied institution and enjoy the art throughout its six galleries by historic Cape Ann artists and some of the most talented, highly-regarded artists of today.
Kristin is the author of two memoirs: Encounters with Inscriptions (Legacy Book Press, 2024), about the books inscribed and given to her by her parents over the years, and The First Kristin: The Story of a Naming (Main Street Rag, 2020), about the experience of being named after a deceased sibling. Her chapbook, Sliced, was published by dancing girl press & studio in 2023.
Her next book, My Moomin Memoir: Reflections on Tove Jansson’s Classic Tales, is forthcoming from Legacy Book Press.
Kristin has published creative nonfiction, poetry, and blog posts in Masque & Spectacle, The Porch Magazine, The Smart Set, Peatsmoke: A Literary Journal, The Neglected Books Page, Clementine Unbound, Virginia Woolf Miscellany, International Virginia Woolf Society Blog, WordMothers, and Replacement Child Forum. She has also published literary criticism in Woolf Studies Annual, Journal of Feminist Scholarship, Journal of Modern Literature, the CEA Critic, College Literature, and Journal of Beckett Studies as well as in edited volumes.
She holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati. From 2015 – 2020, she served as president of the International Virginia Woolf Society. She remains an editorial board member of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany.
~ A bit more about me ~
I’m ecstatic to serve as the Executive Director of the Rockport Art Association & Museum in Rockport, Massachusetts. Given my lifelong love of art, museums, Rockport, and the sea, this is a dream job as well as a great privilege.
Of course, I’ll always remain an avid reader and writer. As an English professor, I enjoyed writing essays on my favorite authors, including Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, Louise Erdrich, and Barbara Pym. I also wrote a series of comparative essays on Woolf and Native women writers that have been lauded for opening up an important new field of Woolf studies.
In recent years, I’ve turned toward hybrid writing that combines memoir/personal experience with literary criticism and research. Of those working in this genre, I love Katharine Smyth, Helen Macdonald, and Rachel Cohen.
I’m also enthralled by graphic narratives, particularly memoir and biography, and any work that combines word and image in creative, evocative ways. I count Kelcey Ervick, Maira Kalman, Nora Krug, Tom Hart, Alison Bechdel, Isabel Greenberg, Glynnis Fawkes, and Roz Chast among my favorite writers/artists in the genre.
Kristin Czarnecki 