Dr. Alyse Bensel
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, FACULTY ADVISOR OF CHIAROSCURO, AND DIRECTOR OF THE LOOKING GLASS ROCK WRITERS' CONFERENCE
About Dr. Alyse Bensel
Dr. Alyse Bensel teaches creative writing, composition, American Literature, and critical theory at Brevard College. She is the author of the poetry collection Rare Wondrous Things, a poetic biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020), and three chapbooks, most recently Lies to Tell the Body (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018).
Dr. Bensel’s poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Pleiades, South Dakota Review, West Branch, and elsewhere, and her nonfiction and fiction have appeared in The Boiler, Entropy, and Pithead Chapel. She served as Book Reviews Editor for The Los Angeles Review from 2013-2018, and her book reviews have appeared widely in journals such as AGNI, Colorado Review, and Quarterly West. She serves as Poetry Editor for Cherry Tree: A National Literary Journal @ Washington College.
Dr. Bensel also advises Chiaroscuro, Brevard College’s undergraduate literary journal, and directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference, a national literary conference sponsored by Brevard College and the Transylvania County Library Foundation.
Education
Ph.D., University of Kansas
M.F.A, Pennsylvania State University
B.A., Washington College
Recent Publications
Books and Chapbooks
Rare Wondrous Things (Green Writers Press, 2020)
Lies to Tell the Body (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018)
Not of Their Own Making (dancing girl press, 2014)
Shift (Plan B Press, 2012)
Journal Articles
“In the Group Home: Disenfranchised Youth and the Creative Writing Workshop as Intervention.” Journal of Creative Writing Studies 3.1 (2018)
Selected Poems in Journals
“[dolls]” in Tinderbox Poetry Journal Vol 6 Issue 4 (June 2020)
“Genetic” and “Love in the Anthropocene” in The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought, Issue 14 (May 2020)
“Pretty Lips,” “Mass Extinction Virtues,” “The Body in Every Parallel Universe,” “[make believe],” and “Armor” in The Fourth River, Issue 7 (Spring 2020)
“Extinction Theory” in Ruminate, The Everyday, Issue 54 (Spring 2020)
“Anoles” and “Soft Surrender” in Plane Tree, Issue 2 (Winter 2020)
“The Body Is a Fragile Experiment” and “Machine Hymn” in Gulf Coast Online Exclusives (Winter/Spring 2019)
“Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection in Every Parallel Universe” and “Westward Expansion” in Cherry Tree, Issue 5 (2019)
“[scale]” and “[warning: reenactment]” in Alaska Quarterly Review, 34.3&4 (Winter & Spring 2019)
“[plant life]” in West Branch, Issue 89 (Winter 2019)
“End Credits” in Poetry International, 25/26 (Summer 2018)
“Nocturne” in Pleiades, 38.2 (Summer 2018)