Teresa Carmody

Teresa Carmody’s writing includes fiction, creative nonfiction, inter-arts collaborations, and hybrid forms. She is the author of three books and four chapbooks. Her writing was selected for the &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing (2009) and by Entropy for its Best Online Articles and Essays list of 2019. The Reconception of Marie was also a finalist for the 2020 Big Other Fiction Award and Reader’s Choice Award.

A co-coordinator of the first Ladyfest Olympia, WA in 2000, she has two decades of experience organizing and curating events that create community in the arts. In 2005, she co-launched Les Figues Press, a nonprofit literary publisher of poetry and hybrid prose, with a focus on translation and works by feminist and queer writers. Her curations range from monthly reading series and Mrs. Porters Salon, to weekend or year-long projects, such as Both Sides and the Center, Not Content and Q.E.D. I & II, at venues including MAK Center Schindler House, The Smell, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), and Human Resources Los Angeles. Her co-edited anthologies include I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women and TrenchArt: Monographs. As director of Stetson University’s MFA program, she has organized residencies in Latin America and at Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL.

In her writing, Carmody explores issues of spirituality, gossip, intersubjectivity and perception, queer relations, friendship, embodiment and the archive, intersectional feminism, and autofiction/autotheory. Much of her work arises from procedure or constraint-based practices, as a way to playfully engage with social scripting and the unconscious. Drawing on her early training in feminist anthropology, global feminisms, and Thai language and culture, her fiction often takes an auto-ethnographic turn, troubling the line between fiction and non-fiction. She holds a B.A. in interdisciplinary studies from the Evergreen State College, an M.F.A. in creative writing from Antioch University, and a Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from the University of Denver.

Projects & Events

MRS. PORTER’S SALON. Mrs. Porter at home and hosting her monthly feminist art salon in collaboration with Echo Theater, Los Angeles. Learn more at the Echo Theater site. Co-hosted by Johanna Blakley.

TODAY MUST BE SUNDAY. (formerly SECOND SUNDAYS) Re-visioning this holy day. Shameka Cunningham and I co-host this ongoing virtual conversation series about writing, art, spirituality, divination, feminism, and magic with a diverse group of visionaries working across disciplines and in a variety of modes. Previous guests include: Lou Florez, Adriene Jenik, Selah Saterstrom and Kristen Nelson, Yolanda Pourciau, Keven Garcia, Janice Lee, and Amanda Yates Garcia. Free, though pre-registration required. View recordings of previous conversations at the Four Queens YouTube channel.

For upcoming readings and performances check out my Instagram: @troseistrose

THE RECONCEPTION OF MARIE: Now available!

“Sharp, funny and devastating, this coming of age tale of a young queer girl in the Christian far right community of Michigan is essential reading for anyone who has ever felt like a misfit. Through shifting perspectives and forms, Carmody deftly captures the complexities of faith, family, class, girlhood—how they make and break us—and the cataclysm of reconceiving who we are. Hers is a vital and singular voice.”

–Mona Awad, author of BUNNY and THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A FAT GIRL

“The Reconception of Marie, Teresa Carmody’s stirring new novel, immerses us in her eponymous narrator’s Catholic girlhood in late 1980s Michigan, only reconceived—transformed—by evangelical Christianity. Whether Marie is negotiating middle-school social dynamics or a faith-challenging personal crisis, Carmody skillfully guides us through in a voice that is cannily naive at times, yet bracingly profound at others, and offers portraits of characters and a world still little seen in American literature but, in her hands and vision, not soon forgotten.”

–John Keene, author of COUNTERNARRATIVES