Desirae Matherly

A native of northeast Tennessee, Dr. Matherly lived in Athens County, Ohio during her time in graduate school. She thought creative writing was a fun degree to pursue on her way to becoming a philosophy professor, until she was introduced to personal essays and Michel de Montaigne.

Her postdoctoral years included two at Ohio University, and three more as a Harper Fellow and Collegiate Assistant Professor at The University of Chicago. Those years living in Hyde Park were transformative. Missing the Appalachian mountains, she bought a house in her hometown of Johnson City and flew to Chicago every week to teach her courses in the humanities. At the end of that long year, she began teaching journalism and professional writing courses at Tennessee's oldest college. Dr. Matherly advised the school newspaper, transformed it into a print magazine, and also served for fifteen years as nonfiction editor for the Tusculum Review, an international literary journal. She chaired a large department for four years, and taught courses in writing, editing, minority literatures, and philosophy. She also logged over three hundred miles as a section hiker on the Appalachian Trail, and still dreams of completing a thru-hike one day.

Dr. Matherly joined Heidelberg's English faculty in 2022 and since then has taught writing courses in several areas, both creative and technical. She is the faculty advisor for Morpheus, Heidelberg's Student Literary Magazine, and enjoys meeting up with local writers in Tiffin once a week to work on her latest projects. Her favorite time of year is the fall, when new students and returning English majors linger after class to ask questions or talk about their summers. The beautiful Berg campus and the traditions familiar to colleagues and alums work their magic across the academic year. Even though there are no mountains nearby, the towering trees inspire awe and gratitude whenever she glances out her office window at the college green.

Matherly is the author of Echo’s Fugue, a collection of personal essays published by Mad Creek Books, OSU Press, in 2019. Her essays have been anthologized in Fourth Genre: Twenty-Five Essays from Our First Twenty-Five Years (2025); After Montaigne: Contemporary Writers Cover the Essays (2015); Red Holler: An Anthology of Contemporary Appalachian Literature (2013); and The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 2 (2008). Four of her published essays have made the Notable list in Best American Essays, and her most recent work appears or is forthcoming in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. She is intermittently a member of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). Matherly is the winner of the 2018 Curt Johnson Prose Award in Nonfiction sponsored by December Magazine, and in 2019 her short fiction won the Owl Canyon Press Hackathon. That short story became a sci fi novel published under an alias, set in an uncertain but hopeful future on the other side of climate change.

Courses Taught

WRI 101 College Writing II
WRI 101S College Writing Workshop
WRI 210 Creative Writing
WRI 310 Special Topics in Writing and Language
WRI 311 Advanced Poetry Writing
WRI 312 Advanced Fiction Writing
WRI 314 Advanced Creative Nonfiction Writing
WRI 351 Professional Writing
WRI 352 Grant Writing
WRI 353 Writing and the Publishing Industry
WRI 354 Writing to Inform
WRI 355 Writing for Social Change
WRI 356 Writing for Non-Specialist Audiences
LIT 232 American Lit 1860 to Present

Expertise

Teaching of writing, including essays, memoirs, experimental and speculative nonfiction, editing, and literary publishing

Research Interests

Desirae Matherly's CV