Bio
Kate Polak is a writer, artist, performer, and scholar specializing in comics, poetry, 21st century women writers, and the literatures of genocide.
Instructor in the English Department at Florida Atlantic University, where she teaches writing and literature, focusing on contemporary women's writing, the representation of violence, and graphic narrative.
Her first book, Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics, was nominated for an Eisner Award. She recently co-edited Science Fiction and the Historical Novel: Days of Future Pasts with Dr. Ian MacDonald.
Her scholarship has appeared in Diegesis, Trespassing, and several collected editions. Her public scholarship has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hooded Utilitarian, and elsewhere. Her creative writing, including poetry and comics, have appeared in a variety of venues. She is currently developing a graphic novel on teenaged girlhood and Cincinnati during the 1990s, a monograph tentatively entitled The Poetics of Comics, and assorted other nonsense.