Cassandra Kircher is an essayist and the author of Far Flung: Improvisations on National Parks, Driving to Russia, Not Marrying a Ranger, the Language of Heartbreak, and Other Natural Disasters, published by West Virginia University Press in 2019.

Her work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Cold Mountain Review, Apalachee Review, Razor, and the anthology Permanent Vacations: Twenty Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks, among other publications. Her essays have been named notable in Best American Essays and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She also received first place in Flyway’s Notes in the Field Contest.

Kircher has written extensively about the art and craft of the essay. Her reviews and critical work have appeared in Fourth Genre, Brevity, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, The AWP Writers’ Chronicle, Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy, Southwestern American Literature, Essay Daily, and elsewhere.

In her twenties, Kircher spent seven seasons working in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, becoming the first woman stationed in the backcountry of the park’s North Fork Subdistrict. She continues to hike annually with a group of women she met while working as a park ranger, exploring a different mountain range together each year.

Kircher went on to teach writing at Elon University for 31 years before retiring in 2024. During her academic career, she served as an on-site professor in London, Florence, Alaska, and Hawaii. She also served as chair of the Academic Council and the Promotions and Tenure Committee, as well as co-chair of the Presidential Task Force on Second Language Learning.