Welcome to In the Middle, Leila K. Norako!

Hello! We hope that you will join us in offering a very warm welcome to Leila Kate Norako, our newest blogger here at In the Middle. Many of you will know her work already from her own blogging at In Romaunce as We Rede, her generous social media presence and important public scholarship, and her wide ranging research. We are thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to have her join us here as blogger #5! A brief bio is below.

-- Jeffrey, Jonathan, Mary Kate and Karl

Leila K. Norako is an Assistant Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Washington. She specializes in late medieval literature and culture, with particular interests in Middle English romance, crusades literature, and matters of Otherness and alterity. Her articles have been published in The Chaucer Review and Literature Compass, and she is currently at work on her first book, entitled Imagining the Crusades in Late Medieval England. Her blogging (originally at In Romaunce as We Rede) and her work as the creator and general editor of The Crusades Project spring from her commitment to public scholarship. Other projects include a special issue of postmedieval on world-building in medieval literature (forthcoming 2018), a critical edition of Magnussona saga, and a digital project on Richard Coer de Lyon that will provide scholars with transcriptions of all extant versions of the romance. She is also working on her first collection of poems, and a few of her individual pieces can be read at Revolution John, Amaryllis, and By&By Poetry.