Anne
Kaier
In memoirs, essays, and poems, I write about the body. How does a woman with a disability see herself as a sexual being? I tangle with how my skin disorder, ichthyosis, has influenced my romantic life.
Honors include a mention in Best American Essays and the Propel Poetry Award (2025). NPR interviewed me about my essays that appeared in The New York Times. My memoir-in-progress is set at the University of Oxford, where I got an MA.
Photo: Suzanne Sennhenn
Finalist for the AWP's Prize for Creative Nonfiction.
I'm mighty pleased and honored that my manuscript, They Said I Couldn't Have a Love Life: A Memoir, is one of ten finalists for the 2024 Association of Writers & Writing Programs' Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction.
Read an excerpt from They Said I Couldn't Have a Love Life at the button below.
Photo: Lisa Braxton
Fifty years after I first knew her at Oxford, I emailed Anna, telling her I planned to visit Britain. Could we get together? She’d been a lithe, black-haired, funny young Englishwoman and a kind friend when we were students. Working on a memoir about those years gave me an excuse to get in touch after a long, silent time.
“Yes, of course,” she replied. She and her husband Will would meet me at the train station in London. I should know, she wrote, that she now used a wheelchair because Multiple Sclerosis had slowed her down. But they’d love to see me.
Craft interview:
I talk about how my work as a poet influences my writing of memoir.
