MOLLY RIDEOUT is a fiction and nonfiction writer and bookmaker who focuses largely on themes of deep history, place, and the rural. She often produces her work as public art or in handmade artist books.
She was the 2021 Writer-in-Residence at Edith Wharton’s “The Mount,” a 2019 grantee of MASS MoCA’s North Adams Project, a 2016 Spillways Fellow at New Orleans' Antenna, and a 2015 Farm/Art DTour commissioned artist. Her fiction-nonfiction chapbook Transient was published by Antenna::Paper Machine in autumn 2019. Her 2014-2015 project, "Public Writing, Public Libraries" includes 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.
As a fine art bookmaker, Rideout publishes micro-run editions of her stories and essays under the imprint Alyssum Press, as well as a variety of blank journals for general sale. She also accepts a limited number of commissioned book projects from artists across the US.
As a public artist, Rideout often installs works of original writing in vinyl film on windows across the country. Learn more about her public art.
She currently lives in the Northern Berkshires, where she works with 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.
