Meet Kika Dorsey | University Lecturer and Author

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kika Dorsey and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kika, what habits do you feel helped you succeed?
The habits that nourish and serve me are those that address my body and mind, and not necessarily the daily tasks I have to fulfill for my career or the functioning of my home. For me to launch out into my day, I need to wake up early and drink a strong cup of coffee with whipped cream. I need to write in my journal about my successes and failures the day before and my plans for the upcoming day. I maybe write a poem. I often then meditate with the app Insight Timer. I do Wordle. I read the NYT’s briefing and the Colorado Sun. Then I move full-on into my day, and I may swim, definitely walk my dogs, teach, prepare healthy foods, and maybe spend time with a friend or my husband. So those are examples of how I nurture myself to succeed. I believe habits of self care prepare you as a canvas to create your art. But as far as keeping ahead of my grading deadlines and showing up for my university classes and getting my manuscripts in on time for publication, one thing I’ve found to be helpful is to split the house into areas that separate work from play. This may not be applicable to some people, but since I’m a writer and educator, I often work at home, and I’ve learned to tell my husband that when I’m in my office, I’m “not at home.” I’ve had to compartmentalize space to keep my peace of mind.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’ve written four books of poetry, the most recent, Occupied: Vienna is a Broken Man and Daughter of Hunger, which won the Colorado Authors’ League Award for best poetry collection in 2020. As a book of poetry, this collection is the one I am most proud of. It took a lot of research of postwar Austria and Germany and has been my most ambitious work I’ve written. In 2023 I came out with my first novel, As Joan Approaches Infinity, a quirky book of dark humor that I wrote slowly in the course of seven years. Currently, I’m working on a novel based on the same character, Joan, as a ten-year-old child who grows up in the neighborhood of West Lawn in Chicago. I look forward to traveling to Chicago this summer to research more the setting. What sets both these works apart from my prior publications is the history of both Austria and Chicago I bring into them. My mother was Austrian. I did not grow up as a typical American and consider myself bicultural. Occupied was based on the hunger she endured in post-war Austria as I tried to resurrect her memories when she was dying of Alzheimer’s and I was managing her care. My father, who had bipolar schizo-affective disorder, had committed suicide in Vienna, where they were living, and Occupied rose from those ashes, too. The history of a child growing up with a mentally ill father and an immigrant mother is something that I explore in my current novel, as well as the period of the 1970s in Chicago.
I teach at the University of Colorado and have become more adept in understanding genre fiction. While I’ve always loved historical fiction, and I indulged in the Outlander series, I mostly have taught realism to postmodernism, and my specialty as a PhD student was postmodern writing. When I teach World Literature, my students are reading work that tends to be nonlinear or gritty work in the backwoods of our culture.
If I had a brand of my work, I would call it feminist. In my graduate work, I specialized in feminist theory, and after giving birth to two children and being in this body, I’ve only solidified my belief that this experience can change the world, and our patriarchal structures need to be dismantled for our species to survive.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
East Window Gallery, especially the Literary Ladies Series, is a wonderful venue. Boulder Valley Ranch Loop is one of my favorite loops to walk. Cafe Blue is a cozy restaurant in Gunbarrel where I often meet my girlfriends. Jeannot’s Pattiserie in Lafayette has the best pastries ever.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
There are so many people, groups, and institutions I could thank in my journey as a writer and educator. The Poetry Salon with Tresha Faye Haefner, Verse Virtual, the brilliant Thom Bishop aka Junior Burke, the wonderful artist and writer Claire Ibarra, Toni Oswald, Sarah Elizabeth Schantz, the upcycling fashion designer Staci Bernstein, and the University of Colorado. I’m sure I’m missing some. I’ve been blessed to have a wonderful community. Above all I need to mention my family: my two children and my patient husband, the latter a wonderful and patient editor of my work!

Website: kikadorsey@gmail.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kika-dorsey-ab953548/

Facebook: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kika-dorsey-ab953548/

Image Credits
Kika Dorsey