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Nina Li Coomes

Lecturer


Nina Li Coomes is a Japanese and American writer. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the AtlanticGuernica and Catapult, among other places. In 2018 she was an , in , and in 2022 was awarded a residency at Hedgebrook.  Her work has been nominated for  and was listed as a  In 2022, her essay on ramen and silent dining was included by Sohla El-Waylly in  

Teaching Philosophy:

I believe that the sacred duty of every instructor is to help each student protect the flame of creativity that lives inside of them. In practice, this means I care about generative exercises and going out into our world and community to look for moments of creative collaboration. Anchoring these exploratory, hands-on experiences is a rich shared vocabulary of work by diverse writers. Said plainly, my focus is on reading and writing together, expanding our sense of what is possible in this world by making more possible on the page. 

Education

MFA + MA, Northwestern University, Litowitz MFA + MA
BA, University of Chicago

Research Interests

Contemporary Asian American literature; multi-genre writing; archival research methods; food writing; animal studies; U.S.-Japan relations; cultural criticism; multilingual writing; speculative literature; climate writing

Publications/Research Listings

Haircut Poems, (chapbook) Dancing Girl Press, 2017
A Map is Only One Story (anthology), Catapult, 2020
Selected Nonfiction, Fiction, and Poetry:

“Letter of Invitation,” No Tokens Journal, forthcoming 2023
,” The Atlantic, April 7, 2023
,” The Atlantic, April 4, 2023
,” The Atlantic, March 24, 2023
,” New York Times Magazine, October 25, 2022
 Vulture, August 2022
,” Guernica, April 4, 2022
,” The Atlantic, October 30, 2021
,” Catapult, January 27, 2021
l,” Chicago READER, September 3, 2020
,” Narratively, August 3, 2020
,” Longreads, April 2019
” Wildness Journal, June 2018
,” Indiana Review, April 2018
” EATER, December 21, 2017
,” Collapsar, November 28, 2017
,” Catapult, January 31, 2020