Woods was born and raised in a rural farm town, Sandoval Illinois, and lived from 2000 to 2003 in St. Louis, Missouri, where she was a resident of the anarchist collective C.A.M.P. (Community Arts and Media Project[1]). She moved in 2003 to New York City, where she resided and worked for A Gathering of the Tribes, art gallery-salon and small press, owned and operated by novelist and professor Steve Cannon. She now serves as the Executive Director of A Gathering of the Tribes, and the Editor in Chief of Tribes Magazine Online, tribes.org. She has written four full-length books, including a novel and two fiction collections. She is best known for illustrating the lives of those in the conservative, rural areas of the U.S.
Work
Chavisa Woods is a MacDowell Fellow and the author of four books: "100 Times (A Memoir of Sexism)" (Seven Stories Press, 2019), "Things To Do When You're Goth in the Country" (Seven Stories Press,2017), The Albino Album (Seven Stories Press,2013), and "Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind (Fly by Night Press, 2009)."
Woods primarily writes literary fiction. Her work has received praise from The New York Times,[2]Publishers Weekly, The Seattle Review of Books and many other media outlets.
Woods has presented lectures and conducted and workshops on short fiction and poetry at a number of academic institutions, including: New York University (NYU), Mount Holyoke College, Penn State, Sarah Lawrence College, Bard College, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn Tech, Hugo and the New School. She currently leads select writing workshops throughout the year through Hugo House and Catapult.[citation needed]
Awards
Woods received the Shirley Jackson Award in 2018, for a story in her collection, Things To Do When You're Goth in the Country.[3]
Woods was the recipient of the Kathy Acker Award in writing in 2018.[4]
Woods was awarded the Cobalt Fiction Prize in 2013 for her short work of poetic prose entitled "Things to do when you're Goth in the Country".
