Lily Gurton-Wachter is a writer and critic based in Northampton, MA, where she teaches literature at Smith College. She is the author of a scholarly book, Watchwords: Romanticism and the Poetics of Attention, as well as numerous essays on topics ranging from the literature of motherhood and pregnancy to the colonial natural history and poetry of fireflies.
While at MacDowell, Gurton-Wachter worked on her new book, Strange Fits: An Unlikely Literary Handbook. The book offers a new kind of handbook or glossary for reading literature, one that combines literary criticism with memoir to explore the emotional life of literary form and style.
