Amaris Ketcham
Fulbright Scotland Distinguished Scholar Fellow, September 2026 - February 2027
Amaris Feland Ketcham is a writer, comics artist, and interdisciplinary educator at the University of New Mexico. She has written and edited multiple books of poetry, a camping guide to New Mexico, and a graphic memoir, Unfiltered: A Cancer Year Diary. She regularly writes about comics and interviews artists for Autobiographix. Through the Arts-in-Medicine program at the UNM Cancer Center, Amaris facilitates creative encounters with patients, caregivers, and medical personnel. She is a Professor in the UNM Honors College, where she is the faculty advisor for the nationally acclaimed arts and literature magazine Scribendi and teaches nonfiction and poetry comics, handmade books and zines, and creative placemaking. As a Fulbrighter at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, she will research and create comics about wellness practices and Scotland’s green and blue places, from wild swimming to forest bathing. She is looking forward to dipping her toes in the Scottish waters, drawing in the Royal Botanic Garden, learning from local swimmers and artists, hosting comics workshops, and developing a book-length graphic memoir about nature and health.
Project title: Sea Cure: Centuries of Healing on Scottish Shores
“Sea Cure: Centuries of Healing on Scottish Shores” is a graphic medicine project examining how Scotland’s green and blue places support wellbeing—from Victorian hydrotherapies to today’s wild swimming and forest bathing. This research pairs archival information with plein air drawing as fieldwork at beaches, lochs, and swimming clubs, translating environmental psychology and medical-humanities research into accessible nonfiction comics.