Her books include Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats,[1] Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth and Shadow Boxing: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction, as well as the anthologies Don't Look Now: Things We Wish We Hadn't Seen and Doom with a View: Historical and Cultural Contexts of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant.

Kristen Iversen was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and grew up in Arvada, Colorado, near the Rocky Flats nuclear weaponry facility.

She worked as a travel writer in Europe for several years before returning to the states to earn a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Denver.

She served as director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Memphis and as editor-in-chief of The Pinch, an award-winning literary journal.

During the summers, she has taught in the MFA Low-Residency Program at the University of New Orleans,[3] held in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and Edinburgh, Scotland.

She is the author of Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, a book of memoir and investigative journalism that traces her experience of growing up in a small Colorado community near Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated as “the most contaminated site in America.” Iversen later worked at the plant herself.

[8] Recent studies indicate that areas on and near the Rocky Flats site are still contaminated with plutonium and may pose a significant health risk.