Kay Sloan

Profile

Kay Sloan grew up in Mississippi and earned her B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz and her Ph.D. in American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She teaches creative writing and American literature at Miami, and has taught American Studies as a Fulbright Professor in Greece and Belgium.

She is the author of two novels, The Patron Saint of Red Chevys (The Permanent Press, 2004), selected as one of Barnes and Noble’s “Discover” books; and Worry Beads (Louisiana State University Press, 1991), which won the Ohioana Award for Fiction. Her latest poetry book, The Birds Are On Fire (Finishing Line Press, 2006), won the New Women’s Voices Prize. Her short stories, poetry, and essays, which have won awards and mention in the Best American Essays, have appeared in The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, Indiana Review, Literal Latte, Room of One’s Own, American Heritage, and The Paris Review. With Constance Pierce, she co-edited an anthology of stories, Elvis Rising (Avon Books, 1993).

In addition to her fiction and poetry, she has published three books on American cultural studies: Not Without Honor: The Wartime Journal of Claudio Carano (University of Arkansas Press, forthcoming 2008), The Loud Silents: Origins of the Social Problem Film (University of Illinois Press, 1989) and Looking Far North: The Harriman Expedition to Alaska 1899, co-authored with William H. Goetzmann (Viking and Princeton University Press, 1982) and now the subject of a PBS documentary on the expedition. She also has ventured into video with a documentary, Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema, funded by an Ohio Humanities Council Grant. The film has been shown at film festivals in Venice, Paris, and Barcelona as well as throughout the U.S.