Irish writer-artist Sara Baume makes things–both on the page and with her hands–that inspire my thinking and challenge me to revisit the idea of craft across various environmental, literary, and historical contexts. Her new work of narrative nonfiction, handiwork, is a book that does all of those things. I recently wrote a review essay for Decorating…

Kissing Quilt Amy E. Elkins 2020 Mixed media quilt (cyanotype, embroidery, indigo dyed fabrics) 39 ½ in. x 70 ½ in. This year, I’ve been writing about how women writers use craft in their writing as a way to survive crises, work through trauma, express queer feelings, and resist oppressive systems of time, politics, racism,…

Check out my recent piece in PMLA: From the Gutter to the Gallery: Berenice Abbott Photographs Mina Loy’s Assemblages I’m a big fan of the Little Known Documents feature in this journal. In my archival piece, I detail the significance of newly discovered photographs that American photographer Berenice Abbott took in Mina Loy’s Bowery apartment.…

Ali Smith is my hero.  I love her books, and it has been a source of great joy to study her work as I draft my chapter for Crafting Modernity.  I keep returning to her words in my new Q&A up at LA Review of Books as a source of inspiration, wonder, and creative bravery.  I feel especially…

  Creative Pedagogy Workshop at Cardiff U. I recently spoke to community members at Cardiff University about creative approaches to pedagogy and how we might understand our role as teachers in the 21st c. classroom.  After an introductory lecture, I invited participants to engage in close reading of Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse…

LA Review of Books recently published my Q&A with Irish novelist Sara Baume, which includes lots of beautiful images of Baume’s work, along with the photographic variants between editions of A Line Made by Walking.  Check it out!  

My publication about H.D.’s needleworks in The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945. Abstract: H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) maintained a longstanding interest in the material and artistic history of needlework, a practice that helped her conceptualize, theorize, and overcome traumatic wartime experiences. This essay presents, for the first time, an archive of H.D.’s needlework and demonstrates…

Dr. Amy Elkins: The Craft of Survival talk at the American Craft Council Library Salon Series March 8, 2017, 7pm Minneapolis, MN < Information about the talk > < Five Questions Salon Edition with Dr. Amy Elkins > < Interview: The Craft of Survival >