Amy Letter

Associate Professor of English
Office Location: 329 Howard Hall
515-271-3819
amy.letter@drake.edu
Letter CV

I am a fiction writer — an artist whose medium is made-up facts. Some of my stories have appeared in art galleries instead of literary journals, but my first and enduring love is the short story. I’m currently writing a science fiction series for Kindle Vella.

 I encourage my students to try the hard thing, the risky thing, because in art we often must tempt disaster to achieve anything wonderful. We also have to find that perfect harmonic where hard work and great fun are the same thing.

 I am particularly interested in authors' use of medium and form: I teach courses in Cross-genre Writing and Adaptation, and courses in writing for visual and digital mediums, including Reading and Creating Comics, and Writing in a Networked World.

 I am also the current director of the Drake Center for the Humanities. [[https://www.drake.edu/humanities/about/messagefromthedirector/]]

 When not writing or teaching, you can find me reading books on networks, behaviorism, and artificial intelligence, or making art, herding chickens, and playing Crossy Castle with my twin daughters, Tesla and Sagan.

 I share chicken photos on Vero.co (non-algorithmic social), and my current blog is Human in a Post-Human World on Substack [[amyletter.substack.com]]