Varsity Spotlight: Co-Editor Karissa Morton
Who are you, what do you do, what’s your story?
I’m Karissa, co-founder of ____ On Sports. I’m originally from Des Moines, Iowa, but I currently live in Denton, Texas with Justin & our cat, Groucho (&, I’d like to think, a tiny ghost slash angel of our hamster, Bridgette).
I guess you can call me a writer, even though I’m kind of meh about that because A] I barely write anymore & B] I hate writing. I have an MFA in poetry & started a PhD in creative writing, but was like HA YEAH NO, & the rest is history. What I do: stress out about wedding planning, wrangle Groucho, work out, watch all the things that star Gillian Anderson.
Tell us a little bit about where your sports interests lie. What are sports/topics/teams/anything are you most looking forward to covering for ____ On Sports?
I’m kind of all over the place in terms of sports fandom. I guess maybe the easiest thing to do is just give you a list of teams slash sports I love: Iowa Hawkeyes, Iowa State basketball, Duke basketball, the Detroit Lions, the Houston Rockets, horse racing, plus fantasy football & basketball. So basically, I’m looking forward to covering all of that, as well as tracking the every career move of my fantasy husband Fred Hoiberg, & probably talking a lot about working out slash IIFYM slash girls who lift slash fitness in general.
What experience(s) most shaped your interest in sports? Do you have a specific sports-related memory that stands out in your mind?
I’m not sure if I have specific experiences that shaped my interest, but I grew up playing multiple sports. My true love, though, was basketball. I started playing before I even started school, & would play against my dad in the driveway from the time my hands were big enough to hold a ball. Pretty sure I still (somewhere) have the trophy from when we won a father-daughter shooting contest when I was in middle school. My enduring hero worship of Michael Jordan comes from this time of my life. (When I got my first teaching job post-MFA, I plastered my office with MJ posters.)
As a kid, most of the people I admired (besides Mulder, Scully, & Xena Warrior Princess) were athletes — a key point for me in my love of sports was the ’96 Olympics. I was completely obsessed with the ’96 US women’s gymnastics team (I can still name the entire Magnificent Seven).
I was pretty decent at gymnastics as a kid, but it wasn’t about the sport so much as it was about the thrill of seeing young female athletes kicking ass. I mean, these girls ranged in age from 15–19 — they were only a few years older than I was — & the ’96 Olympics gave me real girls to look up to for the first time. That was so important for me at the time, & I didn’t realize it until nearly two decades later.
What are you currently reading / Netflixing / obsessing over?
I’m currently in the middle of two books — The Thief of Happiness & Surrendering Oz — by Bonnie Friedman, whom I’m developing a definite writer-crush on. I’m also savoring Olena Kalytiak Davis’ The Poem She Didn’t Write & Other Poems. Beyond books, I’m marathoning Hannibal before season three starts, forever re-re-re-re-re-re-watching The X-Files, & tonight, started watching a new Netflix original series called Between. What am I obsessing over? My macros, as per usual.
Anything else you want to share? Where else can readers find you on the interwebz?
This picture of Fred Hoiberg:
I internet at @ckstarling on Twitter & Instagram. Here are links to a few of my online poems, too, if that’s your jam, at: The Paris-American, Guernica, Tupelo Quarterly, Interrupture, & Lambda Literary.
Also, just in case you need an extra dose of cute today:
