Katherine E. Standefer (she/her/hers) writes about the body, consent, and medical technology from Tucson, Arizona. Winner of the 2015 Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction, her essay “In Praise of Contempt” appears in Best American Essays 2016, edited by Jonathan Franzen and Robert Atwan. Her other work has been published in or is forthcoming from Fourth Genre, The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review, Cutbank, The Indiana Review, Fugue, Camas, High Country News, Edible Baja Arizona, Terrain.org, The Essay Daily, and The Rumpus. Her essay “Shock to the Heart, Or: A Primer on the Practical Applications of Electricity” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from the University of Arizona, where she is now Associated Faculty in the Medical Humanities Department. She is an American College of Sexologists Certified Sexologist and an Arizona Humanities Scholar, recently a nominated as one of Arizona’s Humanities Rising Stars and a finalist for the Tucson’s Woman of Influence Award in Arts/Culture 2017.
Originally from outside Chicago, Standefer has spent the last fourteen years between Wyoming, Colorado, and Arizona. She earned a B.A. in Sociology and a B.A. in English- Fiction Writing from The Colorado College, where she was awarded the Colorado College Award in Literature, the Bridges Prize in Poetry, and the Reville Prize for Fiction. She took third place in the 2006 Playboy College Fiction Contest.