MOLLY RIDEOUT is a fiction and nonfiction writer and bookmaker who focuses largely on themes of place, rural history, and belonging. She often produces her work as public art or in handmade artist books.
Recently, she was a 2022 Green Box Arts artist-in-residence and 2022 Mass Cultural Council Fellow in Nonfiction, the 2021 Writer-in-Residence at Edith Wharton’s “The Mount,” and a grantee of MASS MoCA’s North Adams Project. Her fiction-nonfiction chapbook Transient was published by Antenna::Paper Machine in autumn 2019. Her 2014-2015 project, "Public Writing, Public Libraries" included new writing installed in 13 Iowa libraries and was highlighted by the American Library Association and Poets & Writers. Other publications include River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Mississippi Review, Tampa Review Front Porch Journal, The Wapsipinicon Almanac, and Bluestem.
She has installed her “public writing” in various locations across Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, Colorado, and Massachusetts. Her artist books are held in the collections of Grinnell College, Colorado College, Michigan State University, and the Ohio State University.
She currently lives in the Northern Berkshires, where she is assistant director of MASS MoCA’s Assets for Artists program.
In 2011-2017, as Executive Director of the national artist organization Grin City Collective, Molly led a variety of collaborative social practice art and community engagement projects in rural east-central Iowa.
Contact: molly.rideout (at) gmail.com
Photo credit: Calista Lyon