Denise Grollmus is a writer, scholar, and teacher. After working as a full-time journalist for the Village Voice Media, she attended Penn State University, where she received her MFA in Creative Writing in 2012. From 2012-13, she was a Fulbright scholar to Poland, where she researched and wrote about Jewish Life in Poland since WWII. In the fall of 2013, Denise began her work as a doctoral student in the English Department at the University of Washington--Seattle, where she also served as the assistant director in the Expository Writing Program 2015-2017. Her dissertation, which she successfully defended on December 6, 2018, examines how 20th and 21st century addiction narratives variously employ religious and spiritual discourses that challenge the pathologization and criminalization of addicts.