Katie Mihalek is a poet working through the weeds of science, body, and form to blend modes of expression through poetry. She is a current doctoral student at University of Rhode Island, studying ecopoetics and concentrating in poetry. She completed her MFA from Emerson College in 2024. She has received support from the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop and the Southampton Writers Conference, and was the 2024-2025 Community Engagement Fellow for Mass Poetry.
While at Emerson for her MFA, her thesis manuscript, Hand/Print, was an exploration in the contrapuntal and concrete forms. Drawing inspiration from sheet (slice) plastinates in cadaver dissection and study, represented in exhibits like Bodies: The Exhibition, and Body Worlds, the form of the book expands on the concrete and contrapuntal to physically create a set of hands through the shape of the poems themselves. Each spread of the book is a slice of the left and right hand, palms facing each other; when stacked up in the book, each slice is part of the whole set of hands.
She is currently working on her latest project, Bean, which draws inspiration from coastal marshlands and the urinary system, especially our kidneys, as a intersection to study filtration in the human body, environment, and poetic form.
Contact Katie via email at mihalekkatie@gmail.com for inquires or to connect.
Katie Mihalek 