KRISTINE ESSER SLENTZ is a Maltese descendent, queer, cult escapee, and author of EXHIBIT: an amended woman, depose (FlowerSong Press 2021, 2024). She grew up in both northwest Indiana and the Chicagoland area—what her father calls the ‘bottom of the blue-collar.’ After receiving her GED, she completed her undergraduate degree at Purdue University, double-majoring in English Literature and Creative Writing, before earning a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (poetry) from City College of New York (CCNY). KRISTINE was a finalist in the Glass Poetry Chapbook and F(r)iction's Flash Fiction Contests, recipient of a CCNY English Department Teacher-Writer Award, a former Rifkind Fellow, and Poets Afloat resident. She is the co-founder and organizer/host of the monthly experimental artist series, Adverse Abstraction, in New York City's East Village. You can follow KRISTINE’s art on her substack, Carnations & Car Crashes