A.D. Nauman is an author and educator in Chicago. Her second novel, Down the Steep, will be released by Regal House Publishing in October 2023. Nauman’s short fiction, appearing in many literary journals, has been recognized in Best American Short Stories and the Pushcart Prize anthology, produced by Stories on Stage, broadcast on NPR, and granted an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award. Her first novel, Scorch, was recently re-released in an ebook StoryBundle. Nauman’s fiction investigates the sociopolitical in the personal, especially the impact of culture on identity, the mechanisms of power in personal relationships, and the challenges of life in a hyper-capitalist society. Now a Midwesterner, Nauman grew up mostly in Tidewater, Virginia.
And here’s some more about me
I began writing in early childhood, then, somehow, managed to stay with it. My short fiction is forthcoming or has appeared in The Laurel Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Evening Street Review, Willow Springs, TriQuarterly, Necessary Fiction, The Literary Review, The Chicago Reader, Other Voices, and many other journals. My first novel, Scorch, is a dystopian political satire re-released in an ebook StoryBundle in 2019; originally it was published by Soft Skull Press in 2001. My most recent novel, Down the Steep, is set in the Civil Rights era in Tidewater, Virginia. (It will be released by Regal House Publishing on 10/10/2023 and is currently available for preorder.)
I grew up in southeast Virginia and Philadelphia, becoming an accidental Midwesterner when I attended college at Washington University in St. Louis. I moved to Chicago for graduate school, which I loved so much I stayed for two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. I have worked as a medical writer, a copyeditor, an events planner, an administrative assistant, a tour boat guide, a Pizza Hut waitress, a phone solicitor, and a stringer for a few random weekly newspapers. But now I’m a professor of literacy education at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, where I have the privilege of working with K-12 teachers to improve reading and writing instruction.
In addition to writing and teaching, the great joys of my life are my daughter, my friends and family, my teaching, my writing, and my tubby tuxedo cat.
Education
University of Illinois-Chicago
Ph.D., Literacy Education
M.A., English/Creative Writing
M.Ed., Curriculum & Instruction
Washington University in St. Louis
B.A., English Literature