Theodora Ziolkowski is the author of the novella, On the Rocks (2018 & 2020, Sam Houston State University/Texas Review Press) and the short story chapbook, Mother Tongues (2016 & 2018, The Cupboard). On the Rocks, winner of a 2018 Next Generation Indie Book Award, is now available as an audiobook.
A two-time Best New Poets nominee, Ziolkowski’s work has received support from the Vermont Studio Center, the National Alumni Association (University of Alabama), and Inprint (Houston, Texas). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Writer's Chronicle, Short Fiction (England), and Prairie Schooner, among over sixty other literary journals, magazines, anthologies, and exhibits. In the past, Ziolkowski has served as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, Fiction Editor for Big Fiction, and Assistant Poetry Editor for Black Warrior Review. She holds an MFA from the University of Alabama, where she was honored as a ‘30 Under 30’ alum, and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston, where she was the recipient of the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing.
In addition to serving on the faculty of the Boldface Writer’s Conference, Ziolkowski has taught a variety of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction community workshops at Inprint, Writespace, and Grackle and Grackle Writing Enterprises. Currently, she teaches creative writing as an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Her debut poetry collection, Ghostlit, is forthcoming from Sam Houston State University/Texas Review Press in Spring 2025.
