Queer ecology round table

Stacey Balkun (She/her)

Stacey Balkun is the author of Sweetbitter (Sundress 2022) & co-editor of Fiolet & Wing: An Anthology of Domestic Fabulist Poetry. Winner of the 2019 New South Writing Contest as well as Terrain.org’s 10th Annual Contest, her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2018, Mississippi Review, The Rumpus, & several other anthologies & journals. Winner of a 2021 PEN America grant, Stacey holds an MFA from Fresno State and teaches creative writing online at The Poetry Barn & The Loft.

Kacee Mckinney (she/her)

Kacee McKinney is a third-year PhD student in the English Department at the University of Mississippi. She received her bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma Baptist University and her master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She’s been teaching for over five years and tutoring for ten. She studies literary depictions of animals and queerness in southern literature from the last century. She lives in Oxford, MS with her fiancé, her two dogs, and the love of her life–her cat.

Kelsey Fox (she/her)

Kelsey Fox is a third-year PhD student in the English Department at the University of Mississippi. She received her B.A. in English and Spanish from Brescia University and her M.A. in English from Western Kentucky University. Her master’s thesis explores the intersections of southern sexualities and the Plantationocene in modernist literature. Her current work involves examining the convergence of critical prison studies, fugitivity, and queer ecology in contemporary American literature. She has been teaching writing and literature for five years.

Kara Russell (she/her)

Kara Russell is a PhD candidate in English and Gender Studies at the University of Mississippi, where she researches lesbian attachments to modernity, the U.S. South, and queer ecologies. She has presented at conferences such as SEWSA, SAMLA, NeMLA, and others.