Kimi Eisele

Kimi creates and produces stories, visual works, gatherings, and performances as a way to help us feel kinship with other people, plants, animals, and places.

Her novel, THE LIGHTEST OBJECT IN THE UNIVERSE, about loss and adaptation in a post-apocalyptic America, was published by Algonquin Press in July 2019. Her essays and articles about globalization, US-Mexico border issues, the environment, health and the arts have been published in literary magazines, anthologies, and online news outlets.

She has directed multiple dance/theater projects as a solo director and for the now-defunct New ARTiculations Dance Theatre. Those works explored issues such as endangered species (Rosemont Ours, 2013), water (FLOW, 2012), urban revitalization (The Invisible City, 2008), and food systems (We Are What We Eat, 2008). Recent projects include: The Forest Is the Moon in Slivers, a interactive lecture/performance about the Sky Island forests of Southern Arizona; and Standing with Saguaros, a year-long project bringing participatory activities, innovative storytelling, and performance to Saguaro National Park in celebration of the National Park Service Centennial. She is also a co-founder and member of Movement Salon, an improvisational performance group that incorporates dance, spoken word, and live music to create ephemeral compositions.

Kimi also makes photographs, papercuttings, and shadow puppet theater about wildlife, and the human body. She holds an MA in geography from the University of Arizona where in 1998 she founded you are here: the journal of creative geography (still in publication!).

She was the 2014 recipient of the “Lumie” Award for Established Artist from the Tucson Pima Arts Council and the Arizona Commission on the Arts annual Artist Project Grant (2012). Her work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kresge Foundation, the Arts Foundation of Southern Arizona (formerly Tucson Pima Arts Council), and others. Kimi has been a resident artist at Djerassi, Blue Mountain Center, the Mesa Refuge, the Rasmuson Resident Artist Program with the Island Institute in Sitka, AK, and was the Centennial Artist-in-Residence in Saguaro National Park.

Kimi has taught creative writing and dance in schools, communities, and institutions for over a decade. She is a writer/editor at the Southwest Folklife Alliance, dedicating to preserving and celebrating traditional knowledge and cultural expression in the Greater Southwest.