Bethany Holmstrom is a writer and educator. Originally from rural Appalachia, she currently lives in Brooklyn.
Her short fiction has appeared in Appalachian Review and elsewhere. She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from City College, CUNY, and is a Tin House alum. She received a Ph.D. in Theatre from CUNY Graduate Center. Her dissertation explored representations of race, gender, and citizenship in U.S. Civil War memories on the postbellum stage. More recently her research interests also focus on speculative fiction and media.
She works as an Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York, where she teaches composition, creative writing, literature, and liberal arts courses.
Short fiction
“Dollywood”— Still: The Journal
“A Long Throw to Third” — Tiny Molecules
“Let Down Your Hair”— Rejection Letters
“Ink Drinker”— MoonPark Review [nominated for Best of the Net 2021]
“That Time We Won the Samsara Sweepstakes”— The Molotov Cocktail
“Pile of Feathers” — Appalachian Review
Selected Pedagogy & Scholarly writing —
See CV for more
“Teaching Black Mirror and Popular Culture.” Teaching note in Supernatural Studies 4, no. 2, 2018.
“Artificial Intelligence and Strange Strangers in Ustopia.” Essay in Future Humans in Fiction and Film. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018.
“‘You Women Folks Has No Business to Be Here Anyhow’: Romancing the War and Women in Civil War Memories on Stage.” Essay in Arts and Culture of the American Civil War. Routledge, 2017.
“Civil War Memories on the 19th Century Amateur Stage: Preserving the Union (and Its White Manly Parts).” Theatre History Studies 33, 2014.
“Integrating Broadway: Cultural Memory, Performance and History in The Southerners.” Journal of American Drama and Theatre 22, no. 2, Spring 2010.