Published Works

Bared

Poetry, Published Works

Kara is thrilled to have two of her poems appear in this anthology.

Bared collects the work of 170 contemporary women poets and artists. Exploring the gendered narratives that clothe and fashion the body, gender subversion, the traditional male gaze, feminist theories, and more, the artists and poets collected in Bared resist given narratives about the breast and bra by boldly presenting alternatives in written and visual art. The poetry and art of Bared consider commodification, training bras, mammograms, bra factories, biopsies, bra-fit, pencil tests, cancer, mastectomies, sexuality, implants, nursing, representation, and so much more, highlighting the importance of women’s bodies now and in the future. The cover art is by Wanda Ewing, University of Nebraska at Omaha’s tenured professor who was diagnosed with cancer in May 2013 and died a few short months later in December. She was only 43. A portion of the proceeds from Bared will be donated to the University of Nebraska Foundation Wanda Ewing Memorial Scholarship Fund.During select events, a portion of proceeds will also go to specified organizations that support women.

Illuminations-2015

Bloodsuckers

Prose
Aunt Lena is driving me home from yet another direct sales party hosted by her daughter.  In the ten years since we graduated college, my cousin, the Queen of Home-Based business, has sold purses, makeup, kitchen products, nutritional supplements, sex toys, and now, food products for a company called Classy Cuisine.   Just as I am about to ask Aunt Lena if anyone has ever considered pairing a Classy Cuisine party with a sex toy party, she starts telling me about the time she stopped my grandmother from killing my grandfather…

Read more!  “Bloodsuckers” is a short story published in Illuminations, Volume 16 | 2015, edited by Kimberly Fangman.

Illuminations (http://online.southeast.edu/Illuminations.nsf) is the award-winning artistic publication of Southeast Community College. In the Community College Humanities Association’s literary magazine competition,  Illuminations contributor Cameron Koll was awarded the Judges’ Merit Award in Fiction for his short story, “Baby Doll,” which appeared in Illuminations, Vol. 10!

A Late Frost

Prose
We thought we had made it. We had put out tremendous flight on a balmy day in early March, and since then, we’d been making multiple trips to the fields closest to the hive. Sure, the nectar flows were weak, but our reserves were growing. Yesterday, we finally started capping some cells. Until we begin capping, our food can disappear in a day or two. Traditionally, the capping of the cells heralds our Great Rite, The Flush of Spring Bloom, and by evening word had come down from the Queen that we would gather at midnight. We feasted throughout the night on high-sugar honey, sure of a prosperous season.
Needless to say, I didn’t want to go out this morning.  Better to stay in.  Better not to break the low-humming trance juddering from thousands of rapidly moving wings.  Sometime in the night, I’d had a revelation.  I understood, on a primal level, the great spiritual cycle I was born into.  I felt the sugar reserves transforming into raw power, fueling my wing muscles.  I wasn’t bee – I was glucose, pure energy.  The urgency of rubbing wing to wing, the thrumming infinity of all of us humming as one – we were the honey. I knew it then, that the sound and vibration was a kind of karmic passcode.  These were my credentials. They echoed through the combs of the hive and confirmed that I belong…

Read more!  “A Late Frost” is a short story published in Illuminations, Volume 15| 2014, edited by Kimberly Fangman.

Illuminations (http://online.southeast.edu/Illuminations.nsf) is the award-winning artistic publication of Southeast Community College. In the Community College Humanities Association’s literary magazine competition,  lluminations contributor Cameron Koll was awarded the Judges’ Merit Award in Fiction for his short story, “Baby Doll,” which appeared in Illuminations, Vol. 10!

The Untidy Season

Poetry

Edited by Heidi Hermanson, Liz Kay, Jen Lambert, and Sarah McKinstry-Brown. Published by The Backwaters Press. The four editors of THE UNTIDY SEASON, each an accomplished poet in her own right, searched for poems of clarity, honesty, passion, and brilliance. One of the editors writes: “We were drawn to work that both celebrated and subverted the ‘typical’ Nebraska experience, the ‘typical’ experience of motherhood, the ‘typical’ experience of womanhood. I suppose my own aesthetic leads me to be drawn to work that challenges ‘typical,’ but much of the work we experienced over that year of reading submissions forced me to engage with my own stereotypes and see inside them.”

Reviews:

Stirring, V 16E7: July, 2014 by Sally Deskins

What Lies Under the Heart

Prose
Illuminations Volume 13 2012

Illuminations Volume 13 2012

For the first three decades of my life, I had lived with an unidentified pain, an invisible wound that I wasn’t even aware of.  I felt the mask of my adoption shattering around me.  Memories flooded my mind, cracks in the veneer of my pretense.  I saw myself at age four, waking from a recurring nightmare in which I had been abducted or my parents killed in house fires and natural disasters; at age six, overhearing my parents discuss my teacher’s frustration at my constant crying; age nine, asking my mother if it was possible that I had a twin somewhere who had been adopted by another family; age twelve, filled with guilt after responding to a saleslady’s observation that I looked just like my mother with a curt, “No I don’t.  I’m adopted;” age fourteen, racking my brains trying to respond to an English assignment prompt that asked me to tell the story of my birth; age fifteen, paralyzed by the recessive/dominant gene trait worksheet my Biology teacher had assigned.  I was a tongue-roller with a widow’s peak and free ear lobes (dominant) and had light hair with reddish tints (recessive), but none of my physical combinations aligned with the family I grew up with like my classmates’ did.  

“What Lies Under the Heart” is a narrative essay published in Illuminations, Volume 13 | 2012, edited by Kimberly Fangman. Also published in this edition is the poem “Garlic.”

Illuminations (http://online.southeast.edu/Illuminations.nsf) is the award-winning artistic publication of Southeast Community College. In the Community College Humanities Association’s literary magazine competition, Illuminations contributor Cameron Koll was awarded the Judges’ Merit Award in Fiction for his short story, “Baby Doll,” which appeared in Illuminations, Vol. 10.