UNO alumna Kristine Langley Mahler has signed a book contract with West Virginia University Press, In Place series, for her creative nonfiction book Curing Season, which is partly based on her thesis for which she received the Graduate Thesis Award for her essay collection, “Pull Me Through the Doorway,” advised by Dr. Lisa Knopp. Mahler’s work has appeared in journals such as New Delta Review, Quarter After Eight, and The Rumpus.
On her website, Mahler describes Curing Season as “A coming-of-age book for women who came of age anywhere but home, the thirteen essays in Curing Season pry apart the cracks of inclusion to experiment with the nature of belonging, memory, and place alongside the narrator—a new arrival to the South—who reinvents the displacement narratives of her adolescence, years later, by deconstructing eastern North Carolina’s history, taking inhabitation and truth apart to make room for both herself and other outsiders.”
Mahler was also recently awarded a 2021 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. Her award in nonfiction was the top prize. These recent accomplishments are the continuation of the exceptional work produced by Mahler as a Graduate English and Certificate in Advanced Writing student at UNO.