Jordan Kisner, the 2022 Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor, will join the Nonfiction Writing Program for Spring 2023.

A graduate of Columbia University’s nonfiction MFA program, Kisner is the author of The Thin Places: Essays from In-Between, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. A collection of “encounters with the ineffable,” as Kisner herself describes it, The Thin Places chronicles a range of personal experiences and cultural phenomena, from her own upbringing in a mixed race household, to America’s uniquely evangelical approach to religion, to previously unexplored debutante balls in Texas.

The Thin Places was hailed by The New York Times for its “nimble excavation of the intimate from the observed,” praised by The New Yorker for ​its “piercing vision . . . [which] sees the self as keenly as it observes the teeming, chaotic world,” and named by National Public Radio one of the “Best Books of the Year.”

The NWP’s annual Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor position is held by an exceptional writer who joins the NWP community for one semester (usually spring), teaching two nonfiction courses, serving on thesis committees, giving a reading, and overall enriching the NWP with their expertise and brilliance.

Past Bedell professors include Kiese Laymon, Susan Steinberg, Hanif Abdurraqib, Meghan Daum, and Tisa Bryant.