Hello, I am Laura Cook, a writer and editor as well as an independent scholar of American Culture. I  previously published as “Laura Cook Kenna” and “Laura Kenna.” I’m a career-changing PhD who left academia, freelanced as a writer and editor, and, for now, work editing technical writing.

Before taking on a full time role as a technical editor and communications writer for an engineering lab, I was a Contributing Writer for Christianity Today, where I drew on my past life as a scholar of American culture to write for the Women and Culture sections. I also published op-eds and essays on culture online at Rare and Patheos and in print in USAToday and The Washington Times. I created a blog to publicly work out my non-academic writer’s voice at the now neglected remotepossibilitlesblog.com.

Laura Kenna photo

I loved my time tackling Big Ideas as a professor and last held an academic position as Faculty for Writing and Cultural Criticism at the Trinity Forum Academy fellowship program in Royal Oak, Maryland.  Prior to that, she was appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at GWU, where she developed seven of upper-level courses covering the history of 20th century American culture, film and television, cultural theory, and research writing. Cook was also a regular guest lecturer on “Trends in Americana” as part of the Public Diplomacy track at the US Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute for several years.

While academia was my home, I also published a range of scholarly journal articles and book chapters. I’m most proud of my chapter “Making Exploitation Black” (in Beyond Blaxploitation (Wayne State)), which takes on how 1970s debates about Blaxploitation fused ideas about taste and race to make arguments about black artists and black movie fans.

I live in Arlington, VA with my self-serious daughter and two silly sons. In my non-work life, I identify as a musician, a mom-taxi, and an international television enthusiast. A  devotee of DC’s live music scene, I previously sang in the retro-pop originals band M4TR (short for “Music 4 the Revolution”), performing around the DMV and releasing several singles that charted over 100K streams on Spotify. (I know, I’m suprised, too.)

You can email me here.