COLLEEN KINDER is an essayist and the editor of the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us (Algonquin Books, 2022), which Ariel Levy called “a celebration of the adventure that is other people.”

Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, A Public Space, The Atlantic.com, National Geographic Traveler, Salon.com, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Creative Nonfiction, Ms. MagazineThe Gettysburg Review, Ninth Letter, The Los Angeles Review Of Books, AFAR, and The New York Times “Modern Love.”

Colleen’s essays have been anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing 2013, Readings For WritersThe Best Women's Travel Writing 2013 & 2017, 20-Something Essays by 20-Something Writers, and The Innocent Abroad. Her photography has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic.com, The Chicago-Sun Times, The Washington Post, and The WSJ.

Colleen is the author of Delaying the Real World, a book about avoiding cubicle life after college. Over 25,000 noble slackers bought this book, and Colleen loves when they write her to say, "still in Jakarta..." 

She graduated from Yale College and received her MFA at the University of Iowa. She has been awarded fellowships by the American Scandinavian Foundation, Breadloaf, Yaddo, Ucross, and MacDowell. She received the Yale Henry P. Wright Prize for Journalism, the Yale Herb & Jean Award for Public Service, and a Fulbright scholarship in 2009. 

Currently, Colleen teaches a writing course for Yale Summer Session in Auvillar, France. Other places Colleen has taught include: The Millay Colony, The Chautauqua Institute, The Yale Summer Writers' Conference, Oregon State's MFA program, and UVA's Semester-at-Sea voyage. She was a visiting lecturer at the Banff Literary Journalism Program in 2018.

In 2013, Colleen co-founded Off Assignment, a nonprofit reading series and magazine devoted to the personal narratives that lurk behind every news story (backstory here). In 2016, the OA reading series grew into an online column called "Letter to a Stranger," hailed by The New York Times as "haunting, and absorbing."

contact: colleenkinder@gmail.com

photo credit: Owen Murray