ABOUT

Kristy Bowen is a writer and book artist based in Chicago. She divides her time writing poem-ish things, making books & art, and creating lifestyle & culture content for various websites and publications. She blogs about writing, art, and other miscellany at DULCETLY: NOTES ON A BOOKISH LIFE. Raised in the wilds of northern Illinois, she lives and works in a beautiful, but drafty, art deco building near the lake with her cats, her love, too many books, and a vast collection of thrifted finds--only some of which are haunted. 

___

LIFESTYLE & CULTURE WRITING

Bowen makes a living writing for a number of publications and websites about design, art, decor, DIY, crafting, antiques, and food & leisure. She writes regularly for House Digest, with additional work in Cozymeal, Classpop!, E-How, Homes.com, Worthpoint, Thriftcon, and others. She also pens occasional online lesson content and study guides in the arts & humanities, mostly in the fields of literature, mythology/folklore, art history, and architecture. She is currently working on a memoir project about writing and thrifting.

POETRY, PROSE, ETC.

With multi-genre writing that often delves into gothicism, horror, dark surrealism, and the delightfully strange, Bowen issues a regular series of chapbooks, zines, and artist books. She is the author of 14 book-length poetry/hybrid collections that include the recent GRANATA (2024), a sensuous retelling of the Persephone myth in image and text, and COLLAPSOLOGIES (2023), an examination of modern-day plagues and economics. 

Her poetry has recently appeared in Grimoire, Marrow Magazine, and Dark Winter. A poem, "house of strays," appeared in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A Day:365 Poems for Every Occasion anthology. She has read her work in a number of galleries, bars, cafes, conferences, academic institutions, and other venues, including the Field Museum of Natural History and the Poetry Foundation. Bowen possesses an undergrad degree in English and theatre arts from Rockford College and graduate degrees in literature and creative writing from DePaul University and Columbia College. 

DESIGN, BOOKS, & PAPER

An extension of writing and story-making, Bowen's visual experiments include collage, printmaking, installation, assemblage, altered books, zines, and watercolor, with recent forays into digital art, AI-generated images, and video poetry. Her visual/text work has appeared in several Chicago-area galleries and a number of publications, including a retrospective portfolio of work, "The Poetics of Ephemera" in Tupelo Quarterly.  She occasionally facilitates workshops in zine making, bookwrecking, and other paper arts. She runs DANCING GIRL PRESS & STUDIO, where she makes and sells all manner of art, books, paper goods and accessories, as well as curates a long-running chapbook series devoted to women writers.