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Residency Review: A Memoir in Verse
- GenresPoetry
98 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 15, 2026
About the author
Katie Dozier
10 books11 followersKatie Dozier’s love of poetry began in elementary school, when she memorized Frost in between climbing magnolia trees and kicking around a soccer ball. Born in Miami, Florida, her childhood led her to Kentucky, Michigan, Georgia, and Cocoa Beach—where she graduated high school and tried to become an opera singer.
While studying poetry at Florida State University, KHD became a professional poker player, and later attended culinary school. In addition to books about poker and a YA series, Katie is the author of Residency Review: A Memoir in Verse, All That Glitter (winner of The Poetry Box’s 2025 Editor’s Choice Award), and Watering Can (Alexandria Labs). She’s the co-author of Hot Pink Moon: A Crown of Haibun, and Did You See the Moon Honey (longlisted for the Haiku Foundation’s Distinguished Books Touchstone Award) with her husband, Timothy Green.
KHD is the creator of the top-rated podcast The Poetry Space_, the haiku editor for ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry, and creative editor at Rattle. She lives with her husband in The Woodlands, Texas, with their four children, a new magnolia tree, and too many books. Katie loves long conversations about short poems even more than macarons.
She can be reached at katie@rattle.com.
While studying poetry at Florida State University, KHD became a professional poker player, and later attended culinary school. In addition to books about poker and a YA series, Katie is the author of Residency Review: A Memoir in Verse, All That Glitter (winner of The Poetry Box’s 2025 Editor’s Choice Award), and Watering Can (Alexandria Labs). She’s the co-author of Hot Pink Moon: A Crown of Haibun, and Did You See the Moon Honey (longlisted for the Haiku Foundation’s Distinguished Books Touchstone Award) with her husband, Timothy Green.
KHD is the creator of the top-rated podcast The Poetry Space_, the haiku editor for ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry, and creative editor at Rattle. She lives with her husband in The Woodlands, Texas, with their four children, a new magnolia tree, and too many books. Katie loves long conversations about short poems even more than macarons.
She can be reached at katie@rattle.com.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 18, 2026
Recipient of not one, but two scholarships, and a lover of poetry to her core, Katie Dozier enrolls in a low-residency MFA program “with enough hope to water/the whole garden—to populate Pacific/with the blooms of poems.”
But then her hopes begin to wither when she is sexually assaulted, not once, but three times by another student. “With/each passing day/[Dozier has] just/a bit less to say.”
This student isn’t the typical sexual predator many people may imagine. She is a disabled, nonverbal female classmate named “Star” who attends the university with the help of her aide, “Gravity.” Gravity is also Star’s mother.
Dozier masterfully interweaves poems about her relationship with her own nonverbal daughter as she exposes how the university fails to protect Dozier and the other students affected. These poems show us that Dozier knows firsthand what it's like to have a disabled daughter and to fight for a child no one understands. She writes about her experiences of people labeling her daughter, Charlotte, “a brat/ [and] not a perfect/little girl/lost/in her own/bamboo forest.
But Star is not Charlotte.
Through carefully crafted poems, we are immersed in Dozier’s conflicting emotions. We feel the abiding love she has for her daughter, Charlotte. We begin to grasp the system failures and the utter devastation of Dozier’s dreams. But we also know she has learned that “villains rarely wedge in, with spines out, on a shelf—/they buy milk and bread. Most of all, they buy themselves.”
Aware of Dozier’s empathy and sensitivity, we recognize how hard it must have been for Dozier to speak up—to say not only to the authorities, but to herself, that Star’s behavior cannot be excused. Like Gravity, she knows “a little of those/clouds, and the desperation/not to see them.” With courage, Dozier gives truth a voice when others cannot—not even Star’s mother: Star’s behavior is inappropriate and harmful to herself and others.
This lyrical memoir will burrow into your heart as it exposes what so many are afraid to bring to light. Bravo, Katie Dozier, for your bravery and refusal to be silenced.
I read this poetic memoir twice within 24 hours and am sure I will come back to it often. As a poet, disability advocate, and disabled person myself, I highly recommend “Residency Review” as a must-read memoir for administrators, advocates, and parents of disabled children. In fact, it is a must-read book for everyone grappling with the complexities of being human.
Truth unfolds in “Residency Review” as Dozier’s poetry blooms.
But then her hopes begin to wither when she is sexually assaulted, not once, but three times by another student. “With/each passing day/[Dozier has] just/a bit less to say.”
This student isn’t the typical sexual predator many people may imagine. She is a disabled, nonverbal female classmate named “Star” who attends the university with the help of her aide, “Gravity.” Gravity is also Star’s mother.
Dozier masterfully interweaves poems about her relationship with her own nonverbal daughter as she exposes how the university fails to protect Dozier and the other students affected. These poems show us that Dozier knows firsthand what it's like to have a disabled daughter and to fight for a child no one understands. She writes about her experiences of people labeling her daughter, Charlotte, “a brat/ [and] not a perfect/little girl/lost/in her own/bamboo forest.
But Star is not Charlotte.
Through carefully crafted poems, we are immersed in Dozier’s conflicting emotions. We feel the abiding love she has for her daughter, Charlotte. We begin to grasp the system failures and the utter devastation of Dozier’s dreams. But we also know she has learned that “villains rarely wedge in, with spines out, on a shelf—/they buy milk and bread. Most of all, they buy themselves.”
Aware of Dozier’s empathy and sensitivity, we recognize how hard it must have been for Dozier to speak up—to say not only to the authorities, but to herself, that Star’s behavior cannot be excused. Like Gravity, she knows “a little of those/clouds, and the desperation/not to see them.” With courage, Dozier gives truth a voice when others cannot—not even Star’s mother: Star’s behavior is inappropriate and harmful to herself and others.
This lyrical memoir will burrow into your heart as it exposes what so many are afraid to bring to light. Bravo, Katie Dozier, for your bravery and refusal to be silenced.
I read this poetic memoir twice within 24 hours and am sure I will come back to it often. As a poet, disability advocate, and disabled person myself, I highly recommend “Residency Review” as a must-read memoir for administrators, advocates, and parents of disabled children. In fact, it is a must-read book for everyone grappling with the complexities of being human.
Truth unfolds in “Residency Review” as Dozier’s poetry blooms.
June 19, 2026
Dozier argues that love is action, community is action, and neither means anything if protection is offered only to the people easiest to sympathize with. The harm she describes is not lessened by the context, disability, or perceived capacity of the person who caused it, nor by the strength, competence, or composure of the person harmed.
What makes Residency Review so powerful is that Dozier refuses the comfort of black-and-white morality. She understands disability, motherhood, silence, and the complexity of wanting to give voice to someone who cannot speak for themselves without mistaking her own hopes and fears for their truth.
This book is layered with bravery. It asks what we owe each other as witnesses, friends, lovers, and members of a community. A key element is the bystander effect: what happens when people are too afraid to name harm. Silence is not neutral.
Katie Dozier speaks up.
What makes Residency Review so powerful is that Dozier refuses the comfort of black-and-white morality. She understands disability, motherhood, silence, and the complexity of wanting to give voice to someone who cannot speak for themselves without mistaking her own hopes and fears for their truth.
This book is layered with bravery. It asks what we owe each other as witnesses, friends, lovers, and members of a community. A key element is the bystander effect: what happens when people are too afraid to name harm. Silence is not neutral.
Katie Dozier speaks up.
June 18, 2026
Residency Review is a stunning and brave work that I read in a single sitting. It combines poetry and documents in a powerful sequence that allows you to relate to the pain of institutional failure, and SA, as well as the joys and challenges of motherhood and art.
When Dozier shows the emails she wrote to advocate for action against SA allegations, it's striking because they are so well written. Surely someone who can communicate and advocate so calmly and effectively will affect change. But as Dozier discovers, when it comes to change, finding the perfect words and speaking truth is powerful, but often not enough. There's a certain pain but also clarity in grasping that: you can do everything you can, and it still isn't enough. Many have learned this the hard way. You can learn it by reading this.
And what's remarkable is this document is another attempt, to find even more perfect words that may help more people understand all this, to change the World for the better. Yes, she keeps trying because words are still the most powerful tool, even and ultimately because, they risk failure.
I felt deep solace and hope from reading this. I know it will help so many more who can't speak up yet, or those who don't understand why it's so hard to do so.
When Dozier shows the emails she wrote to advocate for action against SA allegations, it's striking because they are so well written. Surely someone who can communicate and advocate so calmly and effectively will affect change. But as Dozier discovers, when it comes to change, finding the perfect words and speaking truth is powerful, but often not enough. There's a certain pain but also clarity in grasping that: you can do everything you can, and it still isn't enough. Many have learned this the hard way. You can learn it by reading this.
And what's remarkable is this document is another attempt, to find even more perfect words that may help more people understand all this, to change the World for the better. Yes, she keeps trying because words are still the most powerful tool, even and ultimately because, they risk failure.
I felt deep solace and hope from reading this. I know it will help so many more who can't speak up yet, or those who don't understand why it's so hard to do so.
June 20, 2026
The poet, a mother of a neurodivergent child who has navigated her world in silence, finds herself lost as her own world is flipped by a sexual assault, yet pulls up her voice to break silence. It’s the silence of people and institutions to something they don’t want to admit or address, the silence of struggling to understand what just happened to you, and the silence of trying to be who you were for your loved ones. This collection is brave, crafted with skill, unsettling and moving in a gut-wrenching, beautiful way.
June 24, 2026
"Residency Review" is a powerful, beautifully written, disturbing account of the author's experience at a top level institution where she'd gone to fulfill her dream of getting an MFA in poetry. Unfortunately, after several extremely distressing events that were met with silence she felt she had no choice but to leave instead. I believe the resulting book is an MFA in and of itself. It's deeply thoughtful, generous in nature and I believe it can help anyone become more empathetic and possibly more courageous.
(I actually bought the hardcover (which is beautiful) but it keeps taking me back to Kindle for review)
(I actually bought the hardcover (which is beautiful) but it keeps taking me back to Kindle for review)
June 24, 2026
Impressive use of haibun and haiku forms to tell a very difficult story. The chimes of so many rhyming couplets reminds us of the hope in writing poetry—that it can true up the frayed ends of things. This memoir told though poems reminds us with its choice of mode that meaning is a made thing, that memories and tough recountings can be held up to the light in fragments.
June 22, 2026
An important and powerful book. Truly a must-read!
TW: sexual assault
TW: sexual assault
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews