Faculty Profile for Professor Kale Hensley

profile photo for Professor Kale Hensley
Professor Kale Hensley
Asst Professor of Instruction — English
LAMP 309G
phone: (512) 245-6219

Biography Section

Biography and Education

Kale Hensley is a poet, visual artist, and educator whose work explores the intersections of queerness, spirituality, and hybrid literary forms. She teaches courses in composition at Texas State University, where she emphasizes writing as both a critical and creative practice. Her poetry and interdisciplinary work appear in Gulf Coast, Evergreen Review, BOOTH, and Epiphany, among other journals, and have been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is currently at work on a collection of poetry and visual art, and a novel loosely inspired by the life of St. Brigid of Kildare.

Research Interests

My research explores the intersections of lyricism, queerness, and spiritual inquiry across poetry, visual culture, and feminist speculative fiction. Rooted in a deep engagement with classical and medieval texts, my work traces how language, myth, and ritual structure both personal and collective memory. I am especially interested in hybrid forms—poetry-collage, lyric essay, and fragmentary narrative—as modes of resistance and revelation. My creative and scholarly practices often examine the poetics of the body, eco-spiritual grief, and gendered modes of devotion. Drawing from fields such as queer theory, theology, and visual studies, my research advocates for art as a form of wonder, witness, and reclamation.

Selected Scholarly/Creative Work

  • Hensley, K. L. (2025, June). The Gentle Art of Leeching. Gulf Coast.
  • Hensley, K. L. (2025, January). The Works of Flesh Are Manifest. BOOTH. Retrieved from https://booth.butler.edu/2025/01/03/the-works-of-flesh-are-manifest/
  • Hensley, K. L. (2024, December). Creation Myth: Phyllis Rides Aristotle. Evergreen Review. Retrieved from https://evergreenreview.com/read/the-rest-cure-for-common-whores/
  • Hensley, K. L. (2024, July). A Bed Built on Wheels. So to Speak: A Journal of Feminist Art and Language. Retrieved from https://www.sotospeakjournal.org/kale-hensley-a-bed-built
  • Hensley, K. L. (2024, April). When the Last Trumpet Sounds, I Will Be in the Mummy Room at the Museum. Gulf Stream. Retrieved from https://gulfstreamlitmag.com/2024/04/16/when-the-last-trumpet-sounds-i-will-be-in-the-mummy-room-at-the-museum/

Selected Awards

  • Award / Honor Nominee: Pushcart Prize, Many Nice Donkeys. November 2024
  • Award / Honor Nominee: Pushcart Prize, The Hopper. November 2024
  • Award / Honor Nominee: Best of the Net: Nonfiction, So to Speak. September 2024
  • Award / Honor Recipient: Fulbright Teaching Scholarship in Latvia, U.S. Department of State. September 2019 - March 2020

Selected Service Activities

Volunteer
Round Top Festival Institute
2025-Present
Poetry Reader
The Table Review
July 2025-Present
Coordinator
Creative Writers Circle
August 2024-Present