Jordan Kisner's writing has appeared in n+1, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, GQ, The Guardian, The American Scholar, California Sunday, The New Yorker, The New Republic, New York magazine, Pop-Up Magazine, and Pitchfork, among other publications. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize and was selected for The Best American Essays 2016. The author of Thin Places: Essays from In Between, she teaches creative writing at Columbia Univer
"Kisner displays an impressive range of narrative modes in [Thin
Places], bouncing nimbly between gravity (in her ethnography and
her bird's-eye philosophizing) and comic relief, which she peppers
in just when our heads are starting to spin . . . In 'The Other
City, ' about the months she spent reporting on death
investigations and autopsies in Cleveland, Kisner writes: 'Leaving
the office every night, I'd get breathless rushes of reality.'
That's a lot like what these essays feel like, too: reminders of
the weird in-between feeling of being alive." --Lauren Christensen,
The New York Times Book Review "With this collection, [Jordan
Kisner] takes her place among the next generation of American
Transcendentalists, and those true essayists for whom nothing human
is too strange to write about . . . She's one of the few
contemporary writers who knows how to bridge spiritual and temporal
worlds, but who's also able to alter and expand our understanding
of the metaphors we live by through immersive research and writing.
Reading [Kisner], I always feel my horizons and sense of the world
expanding." --Marco Roth, n+1 "Fiercely intelligent and
consistently edifying . . . What makes this collection so
compulsively readable is Kisner's ability to wield her contagious
curiosity and nose for objective reporting to investigate
everything from a once bustling, now mostly abandoned lakeside
oasis in Southern California ('Good Karma'), to Ann Hamilton's
magical and enveloping multimedia installation at New York's Park
Avenue Armory in 2012 ('The Big Empty'), to evangelical robocalls
('Phone Calls From the Apocalypse') . . . Kisner is one of the most
perceptive, open-minded and capable literary tour guides I've
encountered in quite some time, and I'm already looking forward to
her next (ad)venture." --Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle
"Reading Thin Places I was reminded of Oliver Sacks' elucidating
essays, which unfold in the maze of existence. Jordan Kisner's
essays from in between also escort us on an informed and elegant
journey." --Sarah Sarai, Lambda "An unsettling and an endlessly
curious read." --Sarah Neilson, Electric Literature "With humor and
razor-sharp insight, Jordan Kisner's Thin Places: Essays From in
Between captures the visceral, palpable feeling of loss . . .
Kisner weaves together reflections on Kierkegaard, her early
Christian conversion (and later 'unconversion') and waiting for the
subway to gracefully guide us through our own emptiness in search
of fullness." --Henry Carrigan, BookPage (starred review) "With its
tales of high art, reality TV, and anti-Trump Mormon bloggers,
[Thin Places] couldn't be more timely . . . Whether you're a
practicing member of a faith community, lapsed, converted,
excommunicated, or just a lifelong skeptic, you'll find something
to enjoy in Jordan Kisner's first book." --The Bustle "The fluidity
of Kisner's essays in her debut book, Thin Places, is arguably the
most striking thing about this collection. Kisner seems to
effortlessly move from research to personal memoir to social
commentary . . . [it's] as if each essay is stretching its fingers
into the next . . . a nod to the magic of Kisner's careful
layering. This debut collection marks Kisner as a voice to listen
to." --Rachel Léon, Chicago Review of Books "A neatly poised,
sympathetic, and refreshingly unpreachy collection . . . The prose
throughout is by turns lyric and clear, meditative and
reportorial--a combination that suits the equal importance she puts
on search and on meaning itself . . . [These] essays are as
entertaining as they are eye-opening." --Publishers Weekly "Astute,
perceptive forays into America's nooks and crannies . . . As a good
reporter, [Kisner] never judges the people she writes about, often
finding common ground . . . Thoughtful, engaging, and informative
essays from a writer to watch" --Kirkus "Great writing begins not
with the voice but with the eyes. Jordan Kisner has piercing
vision, and she sees herself as keenly as she observes the teeming,
chaotic world around her. She has a powerful voice, too,
dispassionate and rhapsodic in equal measure. What results is a
woundingly relevant book about American dreams and madness in the
early twenty-first century." --Alex Ross, author of The Rest Is
Noise and Listen to This "Jordan Kisner's essays are like intricate
tattoos: etched with a sharp and exacting blade of intellect, but
made of flesh; richly drawn in their details; comprised of equal
parts pleasure and pain. Like tattoos, their natural habitat is
that strange borderland where our skin meets the world--where we
confront our edges, or everything we can't keep out. Always, and
thrillingly, they look inward and outward with exacting grace."
--Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams "These singular
'encounters with the ineffable' are full of risk and daring,
urgency and contact. They confront species of belief head-on
without relinquishing doubt. Beautifully lyrical and observant,
Kisner's fresh voice speaks with uncanny consolation to this
extreme, seemingly apocalyptic moment." --Phillip Lopate, author of
Portrait Inside My Head
"Jordan Kisner is a pilgrim for our times. She ventures into the
operating room where a surgeon inserts an electrode into a
patient's brain. She mingles with the debutantes of Laredo, Texas
as they navigate the fraught space between Wasp and Hispanic
privilege. Wherever she is, Kisner probes the ambiguities that we
live and dream, exploring the spaces where, in her words,
'Distinctions between you and not-you, real and unworldly, fall
away.' She is a tender but fierce writer; rigorous and wise."
--Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland: A Memoir "Jordan Kisner's
essays are a bewitchingly original and highly personal synthesis of
incisiveness, gracefulness, thoughtfulness, and selflessness. She
is an intellectual empath with the deepest moral instincts and a
willingness to consider herself alongside her subjects, as a person
no more or less worthy of attention. Her work gives me the feeling
that I'm being told an urgent secret about humanity that is meant
to be savored, then shared." --Heidi Julavits, author of The Folded
Clock "Jordan Kisner sees reality with a telescopic, infrared focus
uniquely suited to illuminating the hidden, forgotten, or obscured
nooks of our cultural moment, excavating the longings and unspoken
affinities that lie just beneath the surface. With revelatory grace
and insight, these essays refract the world you might think you
know in a new and brilliant light." --Alexandra Kleeman, author of
You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
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