Violet Livingston

Violet Livingston is an acrobatic and lyric storyteller, who uses language and her body to tell stories with grit and heart. Her creative nonfiction essays have appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, Slag Glass City, and Third Coast. She works as an Assistant Professor of Composition & Rhetoric at Landmark College and as a circus coach at the New England Center for Circus Arts. She lives in the forest of rural Vermont, where she teaches writing in person and online and swings on her trapeze.

View writing on Substack.

Ph.D., Rhetoric and Writing Studies, Michigan State University
M.A., Critical Studies in Literacy and Pedagogy, Michigan State University
B.A., Women and Gender Studies, Oakland University

Selected Publications:

Co-editor with Sam Phillips, Timothy Oleksiak, and Stephanie West-Puckett. Informed Refusals: Theories, Practices, Methods for Imagining Consent in English Studies. Special Issue College English, NCTE (forthcoming December 2025).

"Excerpts from Terms of Play: Poetics on Consent as Method." Cluster on Queer Rhetorical Listening, edited by Timothy Oleksiak. Peitho 23.1 (Fall 2020).

“K is for Keep Swinging,” Hippocampus Magazine, 2019. 

"Teaching Consent When a Perp is Running for President." 4C4E (October 2017).

“Be Here Now,” Slag Glass City, 2017.

"Community Service-Learning and Community Engagement" with Laura Julier and Eli Goldblatt. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies (2nd edition). Eds. Brooke Hessler, Amy Rupiper Taggart, and Kurt Schick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
 

Selected Conference Papers:

"Keepsake: In Memoriam of my Mother." To Care for Our Dead: Mourning and Memory as Feminist Practice." Feminisms and Rhetorics Conference. (July 17 - 19, 2025).
https://violetdefiant.substack.com/p/keepsake-in-memoriam-of-my-mother

"Return to Play: Practicing Consent After Crisis." Consent and Writing Pedagogy: A Hope for Human Connection. National Council of Teachers of English Conference. (November 21 - 24, 2024).

"On Teaching as a Body in Motion." Queer is as Queer Does: Enacting Queer Pedagogy in the Writing Classroom. Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference. Virtual (March 3 - 7, 2021).

Selected Readings and Keynote Speeches:

"Gather Round: Stories and Images of Circus." Organized and Emceed the event. The Cotton Mill Studios. New England Center for Circus Arts. Brattleboro, VT (November 3, 2023).

"Circus Acts as Miniatures: Making Art to Find Our Way." Story Night. Hooker Dunham Theater. Brattleboro, VT (July 14, 2022).

"A is for Age of Consent," "K is for Keep Swinging," "P is for Pack." INCITE! Queer Writers Read. Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference off-site reading. Portland, OR (March 28, 2019).

"Consent Culture is Survivor-Centered Culture." Activating Our Campus Conference Keynote Speech. Michigan State University. East Lansing, MI (November 17, 2017).

"Curious, Bold, and Strong: How Movement Helps Us Survive." Lansing Storytellers. Lansing, MI (May 16, 2017).

Consent Rhetorics
Consent Pedagogy
Creative Nonfiction Writing
Circus Culture
Community-based Pedagogies and Methodologies
First-Year Writing, Queer Rhetorics