Background
She was born on December 5, 1961 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States. Daughter of Edward and Suzanne (Sullivan) Kasischke.
She was born on December 5, 1961 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States. Daughter of Edward and Suzanne (Sullivan) Kasischke.
Kasischke graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. (with high honors) in 1984 and received her M.F.A. in 1987. She did her graduate study at Columbia University.
She worked as writing instructor at South Plains College, Levelland, TX from 1987 to 1988. She was a visiting lecturer in creative writing and literature at Eastern Michigan University in 1989-1990. Since 1990 she had been an instructor of creative writing and literature at Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, MI. She was also an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas from 1994 to 1995.
She is also currently Allan Seager Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature, and of the Residential College at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kasischke's literary works have been recognized and highlighted at Michigan State University in their Michigan Writers Series. Her novel "The Life Before Her Eyes" is the basis for the film of the same name, directed by Vadim Perelman, and starring Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood.
Kasischke's work is particularly well received in France, where she is widely read in translation. Her novel "A moi pour toujours" ("Be Mine") was published by Christian Bourgois, and was a national best seller.
In 2005 she was The Frost Place poet in residence and in 2009 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts - Poetry. Kasischke was awarded the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for Space, In Chains. Her work has received the Juniper Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, and the Beatrice Hawley Award. She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes.
She married William Abernethy on August, 1994. They have a child, John Abernethy.