Bio:

Amaris Feland Ketcham is a writer, comics artist, and interdisciplinary educator whose work investigates how place makes us human. She has written two poetry books, A Poetic Inventory of the Sandia Mountains and Glitches in the FBI and edited A Year of New Mexico Poetry. Her other books include a camping guide, Best Tent Camping: New Mexico and a graphic memoir, Unfiltered: A Cancer Year Diary. She regularly writes about comics and interviews comics artists for Autobiographix and draws comics for several local newspapers, including the Nob Hill News. Her work with Poetic Routes, in interactive poetic cartography of Albuquerque, has been adopted by the Albuquerque City Planning Department, using poetry as a means of understanding neighborhood values and community character throughout town. Through the Arts-in-Medicine program at the University of New Mexico Cancer Center, Amaris facilitates creative encounters with patients, caregivers, and medical personnel.  

Amaris is the Faculty Advisor for the nationally acclaimed arts and literature magazine Scribendi. In addition to teaching the ins and outs of literary publishing, she teaches nonfiction and poetry comics, narrative journalism, handmade books and zines, forest bathing and creative placemaking. She has painted murals throughout Albuquerque, acted in a radio drama about the Badlands National Park, and taken students on multi-week camping trips along the Lewis and Clark Trail. Amaris is currently the Chair of the Student Publications Board.

Research Interest:

Creative writing (creative nonfiction, narrative journalism, and poetry), nonfiction and poetry comics, zines and handmade books, graphic design, place as text, and creative placemaking.