About Kim Wozencraft
Kim Wozencraft is the internationally bestselling author of the novel Rush, the gripping story of a young woman thrown into a world of deception, drugs, and betrayal as a rookie police officer in Texas. Adapted into a feature film starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, directed by Lili Zanuck, Rush takes readers into “the harrowing world of a young narcotics agent’s descent into a hell of chemical dependency and moral ambiguity” (Publisher’s Weekly). Wozencraft’s latest novel, Neglect, continues her tradition of crafting compelling, high-stakes, women-centered fiction.
Photo: Robin Weinstein / SUNY New Paltz
Wozencraft’s work has been featured in The Best American Essays, The Los Angeles Times, Texas Monthly, and numerous literary journals and anthologies. Kim holds an MFA from Columbia University and teaches English and writing at SUNY New Paltz in New York’s Hudson Valley.
About me.
My novels are a form of biographical discovery, stories still unfolding. I write what I know and what I don’t know. The thing I like best about writing novels (besides the craft itself, the attention to the words on the page) is that each one is such an amazing journey of discovery. Even when I’m lost in the middle, I’m learning things, getting more lost, researching, wandering in the woods letting the story percolate, and having those magic moments where it feels like something is falling into place just the way it should, at least until the editing and rewriting begins.
A friend of mine told me recently that a friend of his had told him recently that SOBER stands for Son-Of-a-Bitch, Everything’s Real. I can relate to that, even though PTSD sometimes makes me feel unreal. I try to capture that in some of my novels. Okay, all of my novels.
Having experienced gun violence up close and personal when I was in my early twenties, I have a pretty solid case of it (PTSD), and I’m still learning to live with it. It’s frustrating not to have gotten over it by now, though that’s not for lack of trying. Dealing with the disorder has gotten easier over the years, but it gets the jump on me now and then. I don’t write for therapy, but writing is often therapeutic; the change in consciousness that comes with being simultaneously in two worlds is fascinating.
My favorite thing to do is walk in the woods with my dog. (In case you don’t have time to watch the 19-second video, he sniffs at the woodpecker holes and looks up at the top of the tree, then decides to move on. The end.)
Some little creature has moved in or is at least hanging out in there. We never did see it.
Below is a picture of the route I took one day when I got lost in the woods. I was trying to mark some places by walking in circles around selected trees so I could look later and see on the map where some parts of the woods were. Realizing I was disoriented, I just kind of went with it and had a lovely time traipsing around waiting to recognize a cairn or a certain big rock. There are some beauties out there.
I hope you enjoy checking out my books. And I hope you get a chance to get outdoors and be in nature. It keeps me sane (or close enough to get by).
Be well. Love mother nature.
Kim