ABOUT
“I, personally, love stories that are grounded in natural elements.
Taylor Imel’s ‘My Mother is a Person’ is a great example of this.”
I write nonfiction essays on class disparity, rural life and the women in my family—often weaving in research to add a layer of journalism to personal narratives.
My family came to the states as crop farmers and craftspeople in Mississippi, Nebraska, and Indiana. I write with curiosity for the rural working class, their pace, knowledge, and proximity to nature.
I was raised in rural Indiana and moved to Chicago for college. I live in Chicago, now, with my two cats and work as a writer. A few times a year, I offer essay workshops through Heirloom Books and GrubStreet. You can check them out here.
Imel's essay 'Posthumous Requests' was a 2021 finalist for the Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction. She read the earliest version of this essay in 2018 at San Francisco’s Lit Crawl walking tour as a contributing author of Zoetic Press.
Her work of prose 'My Mother is a Person' was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and awarded “Best of Small” by Hypertrophic Press, along with flash essay 'Paper Girl' the same year. Other works can be found with Driftwood Press, Locus IX and Into the Void.
She has read work to crowds around Chicago's literary scene, including In One Ear, Read Some Shit, Raging Opossum, Test Literary, Written on a Napkin, General Things, and Elevator Sessions.
A nominee for Chicago Reader's Best Nonfiction Writer of 2024, Imel is currently seeking representation for her first book—a memoir on her late grandmother.