writer-IN-RESIDENCE
February 5-16, 2026
Cori McKenzie
Cori McKenzie is a writer and educator from St. Paul, MN (though pieces of her still live in the places she previously called home: the Chicago suburbs, Iowa City, central Michigan, and Ithaca, New York). She holds a PhD in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education from Michigan State University. Her short fiction appears in The Greensboro Review, Hoxie Gorge Review, and Great Lakes Review.
Artist Statement
In my fiction, I’m interested in the emotions catalyzed by absence and loss, including grief, desire, and yearning. Specifically, I’m interested in how these emotions manifest in the lives of women and girls and how they intersect with the social identities women sometimes hold, including mother, daughter, friend, partner, wife, and lover. I’m compelled by these emotions because they are instructive: in drawing attention to absence, grief, desire, and yearning invite us to interrogate why a particular absence matters. Sometimes, this interrogation reveals something about ourselves and our understanding of the world; at other times, it draws our attention to social patterns (e.g. white supremacy, patriarchy, compulsory heteronormativity) and the harm they inflict.
During my Good Hart residency, I will work on a memoir that explores the resonances between the death of my mother, the birth of my daughter, and the quilting project I pursued during the yearlong gap between these two shattering events. Using quilting a metaphor, the memoir stitches my experiences as a daughter, mother, and writer alongside cultural histories of women’s fabric art and craftwork.