Ada Wilde is a fiction writer and a 2025 graduate of the Pacific University MFA program, where she studied under the guidance of Molly Gloss, Kellie Wells, Cecily Wong, and Kimberly King Parsons.
The Somatic Gothic & Neurological Reporting
Ada’s work explores the phenomenology of the wound—the precise point where a psychological break becomes a biological event. She employs a methodology she calls Neurological Reporting, a strategy that uses Deep Third POV to document the sensory collapse of the traumatized self. By intentionally collapsing narrative distance, her prose transforms the landscape into an active agent and the reader into a co-owner of the narrative’s trauma.
She is currently developing The Dark Plot, a collection of interconnected Gothic stories that map the “physics” of grief and the haunting inheritance of childhood violence. While her broader work navigates the “fractured self” across the lifespan, her MFA thesis focused specifically on the intersections of childhood and the uncanny. Her advisor, Kimberly King Parsons, describes her thesis collection as:
...a multifaceted exploration of how children process trauma, loss, and grief—sometimes through supernatural encounters, sometimes through their relationships with each other, but always through a distinctive blend of psychological realism and uncanny atmosphere.
— Kimberly King Parsons
Life & Landscape
Based in the small mountain town of Durango, Colorado, Ada’s work is deeply informed by the “grit” of the physical world. As an endurance athlete, she finds her narrative rhythm on the mountain trails alongside her dogs. This lifestyle—one of physical limit and environmental immersion—is the heartbeat of her interest in the Eco-Gothic and the somatic archive of the body.
Research & Academic Inquiries
Ada’s research bridges creative practice and critical theory, focusing on how trauma “encodes” itself into the architecture of the story and the body of the reader.
- Soma & Memory: Trauma & Memory Studies, Affect Theory, Embodiment & Trans-Corporeality.
- Gothic & Environment: Eco-Gothic Literature, Place as Agent, Hauntology, Environmental Humanities, and Dark Ecology.
- Narrative Ethics: Narrative Theory, Feminist Geographies, the Ethics of Representation, and New Materialisms.
