Rowena Chodkowski is an East-Coast based interdisciplinary researcher who splits her time between Montreal and New York City, where she lives with her husband and two cats, Bahar and Priscilla. She is currently pursuing a Humanities Ph.D. at Concordia University in Montreal. Her research-creation work hybridizes qualitative and quantitative analysis to explore media, games, and online subcultures. In addition to her research-based work, Rowena is also a writer with experience in interactive literature, game writing, and narrative design. She is a member of the lowercase.games cooperative, working as a narrative designer and web maintainer.
She graduated with a BA in Government and Studio Arts (Graphic Arts/Printmaking) from Smith College in 2013. After graduating, she received a scholarship through Pace University’s Confucius Institute to study Chinese Language and Culture at Nanjing Normal University in Nanjing, China. In 2016, Rowena became a founding member of the Spittoon Literary Collective, China’s largest multilingual literary collective. She performed poetry, fiction, and nonfiction readings at Spittoon events including Spittoon Feature and Spittoon Literary Tour: Chengdu. In 2019, she returned to the United States to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing at UC Davis, where she specialized in Nonfiction and Hybrid/Experimental genres. After completing her MFA, she entered the Humanities Ph.D. program at Concordia University in Montreal, focusing on Computation Arts, Sociology, and Communications.
Email: rowenachodkowski(AT)gmail.com