Kristen Iversen grew up in Arvada, Colorado near the Rocky Flats nuclear weaponry facility and received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Denver. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Reader’s Digest, Fourth Genre, and many other journals and publications. Iversen has appeared on C-Span and NPR’s Fresh Air, and she has worked extensively with A&E Biography, The History Channel, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is an associate professor at the University of Memphis, where she directs the MFA program in creative writing.
She is the author of Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats and Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth, winner of the Colorado Book Award for Biography and the Barbara Sudler Award for Nonfiction. Several documentaries have been based on this book. Iversen is also the author of a textbook, Shadow Boxing: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction.