Writing

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, starting with an illustrated short story, “A Night Light for Susan,” and a family newspaper when I was about eight years old. Here’s my more recent writing in myriad genres.

Books

Memoir

The First Kristin: The Story of a Naming (Main Street Rag, 2020) is my first book, a memoir about the experience of being named after a deceased sibling.

“Kristin Czarnecki’s debut memoir goes far beyond just telling the story of a name–it answers the question of how we reckon with the world we find ourselves born into while also exploring what we leave behind once we’re gone. It brings the past to life in a stunning way, and its wisdom will be with me for years to come.” ~ Adam Clay

“Through personal reflection, conversations with her family, and musings on literary representations of loss and mourning, Czarnecki paints a compelling portrait of the sister she never met, her parents’ sorrow and resilience, and her own journey towards greater self-understanding.” ~ Lauren Elkin

You can read Bernadette Murphy‘s review in Tupelo Quarterly, Alice Lowe‘s review in Blogging Woolf, and Drew Shannon’s review in the Virginia Woolf Miscellany (pp. 56-7).

I speak about the book and my writing process in a couple of interviews published by Georgetown College:

“What’s In a Name? A Conversation with Dr. Kristin Czarnecki”

“New Book by Dr. Kristin Czarnecki Explores Naming and Legacy.”

I also gave a reading on poet and publisher Katerina Stoykova’s Accents Radio Show.

Edited Volume

In 2010, I hosted the Twentieth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf at Georgetown College.

I then co-edited, with Carrie Rohman, the book of conference proceedings, an array of essays and plenary talks on the conference theme, Virginia Woolf and the natural world. The volume has been praised as a foundational text in eco-critical/eco-feminist studies of Woolf.

Chapbook

Sliced, forthcoming from dancing girl press.

Creative Nonfiction

“The Journey Home,” 400 Stories Project of Gloucester, 28 December 2022.

“ABBA: My Fantastic Voyage,” The Porch Magazine, 28 July 2022.

“When Reading in the Dark Turns on the Light: How Inscriptions brought Ireland to Indiana.” The Smart Set, 12 April 2022.

“Beckonings from the Bookshelf,” The Porch Magazine, 10 March 2022.

“Expressing the Inexpressible,” Peatsmoke: A Literary Journal, Spring 2021. Nominated for the 2022 Best of the Net anthology.

Poetry

“Pantoum for Septimus” and “cullenders, frying-pans…,” Virginia Woolf Miscellany, vol. 98, Fall-Winter 2021, p. 50.

“Failure to Thrive,” Clementine Unbound, 2 February 2021

“Susurrations,” Virginia Woolf Miscellany, vol. 96, Fall 2019-Fall 2020, p. 30.

Blog Posts

“Jenny, by Sigrid Undset (1911), The Neglected Books Page, 19 October 2022

“Woolfian Sketches,” International Virginia Woolf Society Blog, 12 April 2021

“How Research Can Enhance Your Writing,” WordMothers.com, 7 September 2020

“The First Kristin,” Replacement Child Forum, 18 July 2020

A Sampling of Literary Criticism

“‘Books Continue Each Other’: A Room of One’s Own in Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence.” CEA Critic, vol. 83, no. 2, 2021, pp. 127-45.

“‘A Living Mosaic of Human Beings’: The Life Writing of Virginia Woolf and Zitkála-Šá.” Ilha do Desterro: A Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, vol. 74, no. 2, 2021, pp. 59-76.

“‘Unblowing, ungrowing are the roses there’: Violence Against Women and the Land in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts and Louise Erdrich’s The Round House.” Virginia Woolf, Europe, and Peace: Transnational Circulations. Ed. Ariane Mildenberg and Patricia Novillo-Corvalán. Clemson UP, 2020, pp. 219-33.

“‘Strong Women Make Strong Nations’: Women, Literature, and Sovereignty in Paula Gunn Allen and Virginia Woolf,” Journal of Feminist Scholarship, vol. 11, 2016, pp. 61-83.

“Melted Flesh and Tangled Threads: War Trauma and Modes of Healing in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.” Woolf Studies Annual, vol. 21, 2015, pp. 50-77.

“Two-Spirits and Gender Variance in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Louise Erdrich’s The Last Report On the Miracles at Little No Horse.” Virginia Woolf: Twenty-First-Century Approaches. Ed. Jeanne Dubino, et al. Edinburgh UP, 2014, pp. 205-22.

“Comparative Modernism: The Bloomsbury Group and the Harlem Renaissance.” Virginia Woolf’s Bloomsbury, Vol. I: Aesthetic Theory and Literary Practice. Ed. Gina Potts and Lisa Shahriari. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 135-52.

“‘Yes, it can be sad, the sun in the afternoon’: Kristevan Depression in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 32, no. 3, 2009, pp. 63-82.

“‘Signs I Don’t Understand’: Language and Abjection in Molloy.” Journal of Beckett Studies, vol. 17, 2008, pp. 52-77.