Ada Wilde is a fiction writer and a 2025 graduate of the Pacific University MFA program(opens in a new tab), where she studied under the guidance of Molly Gloss(opens in a new tab), Kellie Wells(opens in a new tab), Cecily Wong(opens in a new tab), and Kimberly King Parsons(opens in a new tab).
Eco-Gothic Fiction & Psychological Realism
Writing primarily in the Eco-Gothic and Rural Gothic spaces, Ada's work explores the exact moment a psychological wound becomes a physical reality. By collapsing narrative distance, her prose forces the reader into the claustrophobic, sensory-heavy survival of her characters. Blurring the line between psychological realism and the uncanny, her stories transform isolated rural landscapes into living, breathing threats and render the reader 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 runner, she finds her narrative rhythm on the mountain trails alongside her dogs. This lifestyle of physical limit and environmental immersion is the heartbeat of her interest in the Eco-Gothic and the somatic archive.
Research & Academic Inquiries
Ada’s research bridges creative practice and critical theory, focusing on how trauma encodes itself into the fibers 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.
