Kayla Eason is a fiction writer, essayist, and film photographer. Her stories and essays are forthcoming or have recently appeared in DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Salt Hill Journal, Critical Read, and The Real Story. She holds an MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University, where she taught as a lecturer.
Raised in the rural foothills of Northern California, her fiction has long explored idiosyncratic fringes--both social and geographic. Her work often features a surreal sense of place, the uncanniness of nature, undertones of horror, and mythology as a lens to accentuate and examine the mental health of her characters. In her non-fiction work, memory and sensorial associations are explored through visual aesthetics, psychology, biology, art, or art history.
In 2019 her novella, Mia, was a finalist for the Dzanc Fiction Prize, and in 2020, the book was published by Orson’s Publishing. Mia was described as "...rich, unsettling...both gritty and otherworldly..." (Caitlin Horrocks), "...incandescent...a daring exploration..." (Carolina de Robertis), and "...eerie and stylish..." (Fernando A. Flores).
Alongside writing, she is an avid film photographer. She lives in San Diego, CA, and is currently at work on a short story collection and a novel.