the unofficial story:

Raised among the corn fields and twisty back roads of northern Illinois, Kristy Bowen has been writing something or other pretty much ever since her dad taught her the alphabet at 3 years old by bribing her with chocolate. Thus, she spent much of her youth making up stories on swingsets, day dreaming in class, and decadently reading bad horror novels and trashy romances while sprawled across her bed. After an ill-fated career path in marine biology as a freshman in North Carolina (tragically ended by her phenomenal badness at even the most basic math), she moved on to Rockford College, where studied English by day and lurked/toiled behind the scenes of campus theatre productions at night. While there, she developed a love of Sylvia Plath, gothic novels, girls with guitars, the cozy labyrinth of library stacks, and brilliant but troubled men (aka the Heathcliff Complex).

Because she is also a sucker for clean white notebooks and the smell of newly sharpened pencils, she moved to Chicago and followed it up with an MA in English Lit from DePaul University, reading, writing and entertaining the notion of teaching her vast knowledge of last minute essay writing and creative distraction to a new generation (the idea of which was quickly dispensed.) She later earned an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College. Along the way, she wrote a lot of poems, started the online lit zine wicked alice, nurtured a passion for book and paper arts, and founded dancing girl press & studio. Since poetry & art are highly rewarding but terrible paying endeavors, she splits her days between the studio and moonlighting in the library of an arts college surrounded by way more books than she will ever be able to read. The rest of the time, she lives in a big old drafty art deco building near Lake Michigan with a pack of mongrel cats, even more books, and all sorts of thrifted lovelies. She is obsessed Joseph Cornell, victoriana, carnivals/sideshows, horror films, diagramatic things, vintage housewares, old scientific & botanical illustrations, architectural drawings, postcards, drive-in movie theatres, roadside motels, and all things paper.

She can still be bribed into writing with really good chocolate.