R. M. Kinder

R. M. Kinder’s most recent books, Ghost House and Plum and Crow, blend her interest in fantasy and the supernatural with her bent for realism. Another recent book is A Cat for All Seasons, fiction, but intimately and closely based on her relationship with a strange and beautiful feline companion.

Kinder’s traditionally published books include A Common Person and Other Stories, selected by the University of Notre Dame's Creative Writing Program as winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize for short fiction (University of Notre Dame Press 2021; two novels, The Universe Playing Strings (University of New Mexico 2016) and An Absolute Gentleman (about a serial killer, Counterpoint Press 2007); and two collections of short fiction, A Near- Perfect Gift (Literary Fiction Prize, University of Michigan, 2005) and Sweet Angel Band (Willa Cather Prize, Helicon Editions 1991). She is co-author of a dual-media biography, Old-Time Fiddling: Hal Sappington, Missouri Fiddler (Johnson Country Missouri Historical Society, 2012). Her prose and poems have appeared in numerous publications. She has also written fiction as B.A.L. McMillan.

Originally from Bloomfield, Missouri, a tiny town in the Crowley’s Ridge area of Stoddard County, Kinder spent twenty years of her adult life in Tucson, Arizona. At the University of Arizona she earned B.A. and M.F.A. in creative writing, and Ph.D. in Rhetoric and the Teaching of English. She moved back to Missouri in 1989 to teach at the University of Central Missouri. She now lives in Warrensburg, Missouri with her husband, pets, and backyard creatures. From childhood she has been an avid musician and an amateur naturalist.

Kinder welcomes correspondence from readers.