Chavisa Woods is a

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

-based author, and winner of the

Shirley Jackson Award The Shirley Jackson Awards are literary awards named after Shirley Jackson in recognition of her legacy in writing. These awards for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic are presented a ...

Background

Woods was born and raised in a rural farm town, Sandoval Illinois, and lived from 2000 to 2003 in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

, Missouri, where she was a resident of the anarchist collective C.A.M.P. (Community Arts and Media Project). She moved in 2003 to New York City, where she resided and worked for

A Gathering of the Tribes A Gathering of the Tribes was a two-day music and culture festival organized by Ian Astbury and promoter Bill Graham, held in California in October 1990. It is considered the precursor to the Lollapalooza touring festivals of the 1990s, an opinio ...

, art gallery-salon and small press, owned and operated by novelist and professor Steve Cannon. She now serves as the Executive Director of A Gathering of the Tribes, and the Editor in Chief of Tribes Magazine Online, tribes.org. She has written four full-length books, including a novel and two fiction collections. She is best known for illustrating the lives of those in the conservative, rural areas of the U.S.

Work

Chavisa Woods is a MacDowell Fellow and the author of four books: "100 Times (A Memoir of Sexism)" (Seven Stories Press, 2019), "Things To Do When You're Goth in the Country" (Seven Stories Press,2017), '' The Albino Album'' (Seven Stories Press,2013), and "Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind (Fly by Night Press, 2009)." Woods primarily writes literary fiction. Her work has received praise from ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', ''Publishers Weekly'', ''The Seattle Review of Books'' and many other media outlets. Woods has presented lectures and conducted and workshops on short fiction and poetry at a number of academic institutions, including: New York University (NYU), Mount Holyoke College, Penn State, Sarah Lawrence College, Bard College, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn Tech, Hugo and the New School. She currently leads select writing workshops throughout the year through Hugo House and Catapult.

Awards

Woods received the Shirley Jackson Award in 2018, for a story in her collection, Things To Do When You're Goth in the Country. Woods was the recipient of the Kathy Acker Award in writing in 2018. Woods was awarded the Cobalt Fiction Prize in 2013 for her short work of poetic prose entitled "Things to do when you're Goth in the Country". Woods was the 200
recipient of the Jerome Foundation Travel Grant for Emerging Authors.
''Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind'' was a finalist for the 21st

Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature.The awards were instituted i ...

for Debut Fiction.

Other publications

Woods has published prose and poetry in a number of magazines, including: * Lit Hub * Electric Lit * Tin House Magazine * Sensitive Skin 2017 * ''Cleaver Magazine'' 2013 * Adanna 2013 * ''Union Station Magazine'' 2011 * ''The Evergreen Review'' 2011 * Danse Macabre- Stonewall Issue, 2009 * Poetz.com Green Issue, 2008 * ''Blue Fog'' Journal, 2007 * ''Cake Poetry'', 2007 * ''Tribes Magazine'', 2007 * ''The Red Doll'' ( chapbook) – 2006 * ''Matador'', 2006 * ''The BARD'' Gay and Lesbian Poetry Review, 2006 * ''Chronogram'', 2006 * ''Conversations with the Other Woman'' (chapbook), 2006 * ''Where We Live'', 2005, * ''Calling the Red'', Chapbook, 2005 * ''Xanadou'', 2004 * ''Wildflowers'', 2004 * ''In The Fray'', 2004

Fiction

* ''

Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country ''Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country & Other Stories'' is a 2017 collection of short stories by the American writer Chavisa Woods published by Seven Stories Press. Its stories focus on the lives of rural Americans, especially how their l ...

'', Short Fiction Collection, Seven Stories Press, 2017 * "Zombie,
Tin House
2017 * "What's Happening on the News?" Short Fiction Quaint Magazine, 2016 * '' The Albino Album'' (Seven Stories Press, 2013) * How to Stop Smoking.... Usama Sensitive Skin Magazine 2012 * "A New Mowhawk" Jadalliya 2012 * ''Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind'', Fly By Night Press, 2008 * "The Smallest Actions",

The Fiction Circus ''The Fiction Circus'' was a Brooklyn- and Austin-based online literary magazine and art collective that published short fiction and essays on the arts. It existed between 2008 and 2014. The group also held staged multimedia fiction readings acco ...

, 2008 * "The Bell Tower", Prima Materia, 2006 * Short story in ''Fuzion'' 1003, 2004

Nonfiction

An Economy of Tigers
Full Stop Magazine, 2020 *
Hating Valerie Solanas (And Loving Violent Men,"
Full Stop Magazine, 2019
The Memoir I Never Wanted to Write
Lit Hub 2018 *
100 Times: A Memoir of Sexism'
, 2019
Ten Books for Country Goths
Electric Lit, 2017
Gentlemen, Close Your Legs
The Brooklyn Rail, 2012

Documentaries

* ''Rhapsodists'', 2004

Book reviews

2019 * Publishers Weekly * Booklist * Pedestal Magazine * The Brooklyn Rail

* GO! Mag