Heather Kirn Lanier

Heather Kirn Lanier is the author of RAISING A RARE GIRL (Penguin Press, 2020), a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. She has also published two award-winning poetry chapbooks, HEART-SHAPED BED IN HIROSHIMA (Standing Rock, 2015), and THE STORY YOU TELL YOURSELF (Kent State U, 2012), winner of the Wick Poetry Open Chapbook Competition. She has received a Rona Jaffe – Bread Loaf Scholarship in nonfiction and an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, also in nonfiction. Her work has been noted in The Best American Essays Series, nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and published in dozens of places, including Salon, The Sun, TIME, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, and Brevity. A graduate of Ohio State University’s MFA program, she is an assistant professor of creative writing at Rowan University.