Facts About Neuroplasticity

Heather Dorn earned a Ph.D. in English, Creative Writing from Binghamton University, and an M.A. in Composition and Rhetoric from Texas A & M Corpus Christi. She won the Newhouse Award for Poetry from Binghamton University in 2008, and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the Marion Clayton Link Endowment from Binghamton University in 2012. Her first book of poetry, How to Play House, will be out this fall from NeuroQueer Books, an imprint of Autonomous Press. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in the The American Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review, Ragazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Kentucky Review, Requited, and similar journals. Her story, “How to Name Your Daughter,” was awarded Digging Through the Fat’s Editor’s Choice of 2015 and her poem, “How to Cook in a Coffee Pot,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She became interested in poetry early in life when she got sent to her room in trouble. Crying, she repeated the word “mom” so many times that it sounded weird. It stopped sounding like a real word and became interesting. Though Dr. Dorn stopped crying, she couldn’t stop saying the word. Now, she repeats words in upstate New York while making Shrinky Dink jewelry, eating tacos, and going on karaoke adventures.