ABOUT

Kristy Bowen is a writer and book artist based in Chicago. She divides her time writing beautiful and dreadful things across many genres, making books & art, and penning creative lifestyle content for various websites and publications. She blogs about writing, art, horror, 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. 

POETRY, ESSAYS, ETC.

A horror writer whose hybrid work often delves into gothicism, surrealism, and the delightfully strange, Bowen issues a regular series of chapbooks, zines, and artist books blending text and image. She is the author of 14 longer books, including the recent GRANATA, a darkly sensuous retelling of the Persephone myth, and COLLAPSOLOGIES, a collection of poems about plagues and commerce. Other recent collections include AUTOMAGIC, ANIMAL VEGETABLE MONSTER, DARK COUNTRY; FEED; and SEX & VIOLENCE (Black Lawrence Press, 2020).  Her latest collection, RUINPORN, is due out in late 2024. 

Bowen's writing 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. 

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. 

CREATIVE LIFESTYLE WRITING

Bowen creates content for a number of publications and websites about design, decor, art,  crafting, thrifting, and entertaining. She is a staff writer for House Digest and writes regularly for Classpop! Magazine. Additional articles on everything from horror movies and home improvement to antiques and architecture have appeared at Cozymeal,, E-How, Homes.com, Worthpoint, Study.com, Thriftcon, GameRant, and others. She is currently working on a memoir project about writing and thrifting