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Kara Dorris earned a PhD in literature and poetry at the University of North Texas. Currently, she is an assistant professor of English at Illinois College. Her full-length collection, Have Ruin, Will Travel, was published by Finishing Line Press (2019), as well as her second book, When the Body is a Guardrail (2020).

She has also published five chapbooks: Elective Affinities (dancing girl press, 2011), Night Ride Home (Finishing Line Press, 2012), Sonnets from Vada’s Beauty Parlor & Chainsaw Repair (dancing girl press, 2018), Untitled Film Still Museum (CW Books, 2019), and Carnival Bound [or, please, unwrap me] (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2020).

Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, DIAGRAM, Gold Wake Live, I-70 Review, Southword, Rising Phoenix, Harpur Palate, Cutbank, Hayden Ferry Review, RHINO, Tinderbox, Puerto del Sol, The Tulane Review, and Crazyhorse, among others literary journals, as well as the anthology Beauty is a Verb (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011). Her prose has appeared in Wordgathering, Waxwing, Breath and Shadow, and the anthology The Right Way to be Crippled and Naked (Cinco Puntos Press, 2016).  

She has made a career of failing, of never being satisfied with her own writing. Loves slow country mornings rocking in porch swings and driving lonely highways fast, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (or The Golden Girls) and listening to The National’s High Violet, swimming laps and taking naps with her pooch while dreaming of poetry…