Andrea RileyReilly portrait

Areas of Interest

  • Recovering narratives of activism by Anishinaabe women
  • Representations of women in popular media
  • Rhetorics of sexual violence and representations of sexual assault survivors in popular media
  • Developing a pedagogical approach to teaching Creative Writing and Literature to female inmates

Biography

Andrea Riley completed her MA in creative writing at Illinois State University in 2008. She is a first year PhD student in the program of American Studies at MSU. She is currently completing a collection of poems and essays discussing identification and female characters in zombie films entitled “When there’s no more room in my vagina the dead will walk the earth.” She is also translating a book of poems by Tristan Tzara (French to English). Riley was assistant dramaturge and language specialist (English to Ojibwe) for Illinois State University's 2007 rendition of Marie Clement's "The Unnatural and Accidental Women," based on true accounts of Gilbert Paul Jordan, a serial killer who murdered and raped First Nations women. Andrea is a part of the Illinois Lincoln Women’s Writing Project which is a collaborative creative writing and literature course directed towards female prisoners. Her poems and nonfiction can be read in elimae and Temenos.