New NMSU writing teacher connects the dots with math

Kelly Krumrie is an unusual fiction writer.

That’s because she engages with concepts from math and science.

The fiction writer just began her teaching career at New Mexico State University this fall as the new assistant professor of creative writing. She has a reading of her latest work, “No Measure,” a hybrid of both poetry and prose, at 7:30 p.m. on October, 3, 2025, in the Milton Hall auditorium on NMSU campus.

The reading is free and open to the public.

What makes Krumrie’s blend of fiction, poetry and mathematical concepts even more unusual is that she was terrible at math as a child.

“I was the kind of kid that cried and failed at math,” Krumrie said with a laugh.

But she spent ten years working as a middle school teacher in Colorado before getting her Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Denver. While she was teaching middle school, Krumrie's boss asked her to train to teach math because of the math teacher shortage.

“I said no, definitely not,” she said.

But she relented and the school sent her to train to teach math to middle school students.

“I ended up loving it. I came to it as an adult. It was low stakes,” she said.

Krumrie said partly what made her a successful math teacher was that she could connect with students who struggled with the subject.

“I made it light and super fun. Then I got curious about how visual artists use it. It became my thing,” Krumrie said.

Krumrie’s book, “No Measure,” is an imagined White Sands National Park. But Krumrie had not visited the park before she wrote about it.

She said she began the piece during the COVID-19 public health emergency. She was living in Colorado at the time, but had spent a lot of time in New Mexico and traveled around the southwest.

“I didn’t go to White Sands until I finished the draft. It felt like a weird trip into my own imagination. It’s beautiful; it’s so strange,” she said.

According to Krumrie’s publisher, the book is about two entangled scientists who attempt to measure, record and modify a desert on all scales.

Krumrie said she is one of a small group of literary fiction writers interested in bridging math and science into literary fiction.

“I’m working on finishing up a manscript. It’s a novel about radio transmissions and linguistics and mysterious transmissions. I hiked up to radio towers in the Sandias over the weekend,” she said.

Krumrie also started a new project about an isolated separatist community. She said she might explore ideas around nuclear fallout with that manuscript.

Krumrie said she is just getting to know her creative writing students at NMSU.

“I would say, so far, the students I’ve had are just really excited about creative writing and exploring their own worlds and their own imaginations. They’re committed and invested in the work. It’s lovely. It’s been so rejuvenating to be in classrooms with students who want to be there,” she said.

Something else Krumrie hopes to work on while teaching at NMSU is reviving a program that brought college creative writing students into public school classrooms as volunteers.

“It’s super fun for them to get to experience teaching,” she said.