Amanda Irene Rush is the author of The Gathering Girl, a memoir published in 2023 by Publish Her Press. Her essays, short stories, and poetry have appeared in Vanderbilt Press’ 2008 anthology The Way We Work, The Bellevue Literary Review, Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, The Saturday Evening Post’s online magazine, Peatsmoke, Black Fork Review, Cutleaf, and New Ohio Review. One of her short stories, “Too Good to Be Forgotten,” was nominated in 2022 for the Pushcart Prize.
She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Ohio Wesleyan University, where she studied Ancient Greek and Existentialism. Years later, she earned a Master of Sciences in Nursing from the Ohio State University. Years later still, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Ashland University.
A psychiatric nurse practitioner since 2008, she now operates a small, solo mental health practice where she does everything from cleaning the toilet to writing prescriptions.
She lives and writes in bucolic Champaign County, Ohio in a house she and her husband built out of discarded things. If you’re interested, you can visit their page on Facebook. She and her husband are caretakers to a dog (Toby), three cats (Libby, Moxie, and KiKi), a tortoise (Tortie), four hens (Gaudalupe, Marge, Queenie, and Meg), and a rooster (Little Jerry).
Every Sunday and Wednesday she can be found at her local coffee shop talking to poems. To listen in on the Wednesday conversations, check out her weekly Substack series Conversations with Poems.
She is currently seeking a publisher for her hybrid work Conversations with Poems. Part poetry anthology, part lyric memoir, this first volume is the product of the first sixteen weeks of a creative practice she began in the spring of 2024.
amandairush.com 