K. A. Wisniewski currently serves as the Director of Book History and Digital Initiatives at the American Antiquarian Society. His work investigates the history and future of the book, reading and writing, digital publishing, and cultural theory and rhetorics.  He is the Founding Editor of the open access journal Textshop Experiments.  

His most recent book is a new edited edition of Francis Hopkinson’s A Pretty Story ( forthcoming 2022). His chapbook Making Faces was released in 2016. His poetry and translations have appeared in dozens of journals and magazines, including Toad Suck Review, Coldnoon, basalt, Tule Review, Chariton Review, Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal, Blue Lyra Review, Bluestem, Mayday Magazine, and Third Wednesday.  He is currently working on two translation projects on Swiss novelist and poet Julien Burri and Belgian surrealist poet and art critic Marcel Lecomte.  He is also working on a new book of poetry called The Compositor.

His essays and book reviews have appeared in Genre, Hyperrhiz, The Journal of the Early Republic, The Maryland Historical Magazine, Civil War History, and Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, among others. In 2009, he edited an anthology on comedian Dave Chappelle, The Comedy of Dave Chappelle: Critical Essays (McFarland).  He has contributed chapters to Exquisite Corpse: Art-Based Writing Practices in the Academy (Parlor Press, 2019), Commanding Words: Essays on the Discursive Constructions, Manifestations, and Subversions of Authority (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), Kidding Around: The Child in Film and Media (Bloomsbury, 2014), and The Stewart/Colbert Effect: Essays on the Real Impacts of Fake News (McFarland, 2011).

Prior to his appointment at the American Antiquarian Society, Dr. Wisniewski spent fifteen years in higher education. He taught in English, History, and Visual Arts departments at the University of Maryland College Park, Stevenson University, the University of Baltimore, and Widener University, among others.  His courses have included Experimental Writing; the Digital Humanities; the History of Graphic Design; Book History; Printmaking and Print Media; and the American Novel.  He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the American Printing History Association; the Massachusetts Historical Society; Boston College; the Maryland Historical Society; the Hagley Museum; and the Dresher Center for the Humanities.

Wisniewski earned his Ph.D. in the Language, Literacy & Culture Program (English & History) at UMBC, where he studied the history of publishing from printing presses to digital forms.  Much of his work has been dedicated to the investigation of the evaluation of multimodal scholarship and digital tools and platforms, the business models of both the university press and small press, the future of the monograph, and the politics of authorship. His dissertation continues this thread by further investigating the role of publishing in the eighteenth century and beyond and the lessons we must learn as we further enter the digital age.  It focuses on Philadelphia-native and founding father Francis Hopkinson and the publishing experiments and performances of revolutionary America, including literary hoaxes and frauds, political propaganda, technological and typographical experiments, and the complex networks and rivalries between writers and printers.  It argues that the sociopoetics of publishing is part of literature and literary meaning. Before arriving to UMBC, he earned M.A. degrees in both English and History from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing & the Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore. 

Under another name, he has also produced and curated a series of conceptual art projects and interventionist public art installations. He has been associated with the LOMA Art Ensemble, the Vibranium Experiments, the Franklin Street Collective, and the Baltimore School. In 2014, Wisniewski was appointed Managing Editor of Roving Eye Press, by a collective of artists and scholars re-issuing the works of the poet-publisher-impresario-writer in every imaginable genre, Bob Brown (1886-1959).  In addition, he joined the Editorial Board at Calypso Editions, an artist-run small press publishing literary fiction, poetry, and translations, as well as the Editorial Board of Beyond Criticism, a book series published by Bloomsbury.

Wisniewski was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He lives in Clinton, Massachusetts, with his wife Molly.

Current work, teaching reports, and other notes and updates can be found on his blog at http://kawisniewski.com/.