A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Kate Lechler, an adult person with a fair skin tone and a platinum pixie cut.

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Kate Lechler

Lecturer

Contact

Bio

I’m Dr. Kate (they/them)–an educator, writer, and editor. I moved to Chicago in 2023 and currently teach first-year writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, teaching classes themed around Food, the Sea, and short stories. My Ph.D. from Florida State University is in early British literature, with a special emphasis on drama and the history of the book. My other research interests include the staging of women’s bodies; fairy tales and folklore; and science-fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and horror. For 10 years before coming to SAIC, I taught English Literature at the University of Mississippi.

My creative writing interests are mostly in fantasy, magical realism, science fiction, and horror. My poetry and fiction has appeared in Podcastle, Fireside Fiction, Arsenika, and Illumen, among other places. My non-fiction essays have appeared at Superstition Review and The Deadlands. I also reviewed sci-fi & fantasy at FantasyLiterature.com where I once curated a column, “The Expanded Universe.”

Publications

"This Great Rumble," Fusion Fragment, short story, Feb 2025; "Extreme Sports Club for Octogenarians," The Deadlands, short story, Jan 2025; “How to Haunt Your Local Forest,” Fireside Fiction, short story, June 2021; “The Thing that Doesn’t Disintegrate,” The Deadlands, essay, June 2021; “His Hands on My Skin,” Typehouse Literary Magazine, short story, January 2021; “The Witch in the Woods Falls in Love a Third Time,” Shimmer, flash fiction, November 2018; “The Magician Deletes Her Feed,” Kaleidotrope, short story, July 2018; “Cthulhu Listens to the Beach Boys,” Liminality, poem, Sept 2017; “The Breathtaking Sting of the Pull,” Superstition Review, essay, May 2017; “The Hulder’s Husband Says Don’t,” Fireside Fiction, flash fiction, April 2017; “The Lost Heirs of Rose McAlder,” Metaphorosis, short story, March 2017; “The Beautiful Bird Sits No Longer Singing in the Nest,” Podcastle, short story, September 2016.

Personal Statement

The kind of reading, writing, and thinking that excites me most is the kind that helps us to, in the words of E.M. Forster, “only connect.” My goal in the classroom is to teach my student to make such connections for themselves.  In other words, I not only teach them about audience, rhetorical strategies, sound, and structure, but I also strive to help my students experience a congruence between the academic and cultural traditions to which they belong and their lives outside school. As such, bringing experience into the classroom—or the classroom to an experience—is important to me. 

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

The oldest art depicting boats was created 40,000 years ago. For just as long, the sea¿barrier, connector, nurturer, destroyer¿has fascinated artists and authors. Its sound calms us; its mystery thrills us; its strength terrifies us. This course will focus on texts that span a variety of nations, languages, time periods, genres, and mediums, all of which explore the collective human experience of the sea. What voices does the ocean use to speak to us, and what does it say? In response to these questions, we¿ll read texts by Herman Melville, Rivers Solomon, and Homer; examine ancient myth and Lovecraftian mythos; view illustration and animation by Trungles and Hayao Miyazaki; and listen to sea shanties, Debussy, and clipping. As a First Year Seminar I course, the essay writing focus of this class will be to develop and build skills in writing response and analytical essays related to assigned readings, research, and class discussion. Students in FYS I should expect to write 15 to 20 pages of formal, revisable writing in addition to homework exercises and in-class writing. This writing will take the form of two essays with multiple drafts based on instructor and peer workshop feedback.

Class Number

1387

Credits

3

Description

This course will trace the development of the modern short story, focusing primarily on the 20th century. There are three goals of this course. First, we will look closely at the form of the short story - the tools an author has at his/her disposal. Second, we will examine the innovations that occurred in the 20th century. And finally - through in-class discussion and workshop - we will focus on the craft of paper-writing. Through repetition of short writing exercises, we aim to make the basic structure of academic writing second-nature. We will also learn the art of thesis-writing - translating our general observations of the short-story form into unique and penetrating arguments. In this course we will focus on the core skills of reading and writing, preparing us for all our future coursework at SAIC. Students learn to make nuanced observations about the texts we study, observations which form the basis for the argumentative papers we write. This course begins with Anton Chekhov but focuses mainly on 20th century American authors. Authors include Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O?Connor, Katherine Mansfield, Sherwood Anderson and Donald Barthelme. Assignments consist of informal, observational journals, short papers and a larger Final Paper at the end of the course.

Class Number

1374

Credits

3

Description

Food is one of life¿s great pleasures and the pursuit of flavor and nutrition has shaped the global map as we know it today. Every culture has food rituals around both its preparation and consumption, while the academic study of food intersects with almost every other topic of study, from economics and biology, to history and art. This course will focus on texts that span a variety of nations, languages, genres, and mediums, all of which explore the collective human experience of food. What do we eat¿and when and why? How did our most beloved foods come to be and how do they reach us today? In response to these questions, we¿ll read texts by famous food-writers such as Michael Pollan and Samir Nosrat, alongside horror and fantasy stories by Cassandra Khaw and Seanan McGuire. We¿ll examine medieval recipes alongside viral TikTok recipes; view Dutch and Flemish still lifes and Warhol paintings; and watch the Hulu show The Bear and Stanley Tucci¿s movie Big Night. In their research and writing students can expect to explore the topic of food that most inspires their curiosity, FYS II builds upon the foundational writing skills students began learning in FYS I, with the introduction of more rigorous argumentation and research. Eventually, writing and revision will be more self-directed in this FYS II class, which provides guided experience in writing college-level essays of various kinds. Students should expect to write 20-25 pages of formal, revisable writing as well as homework exercises and in-class writing. This writing will take the form of two essays and a final project, an in-depth revision based on instructor and peer workshop feedback.

Class Number

1347

Credits

3