... the fluidity of Kisner’s essays in her debut book, Thin Places, is arguably the most striking thing about this collection. Kisner seems to effortlessly move from research to personal memoir to social commentary—often within a single essay. The topics in Thin Places are wide-ranging, but it’s also as if each essay is stretching its fingers into the next, so there’s a nice congruity throughout the book.

... fiercely intelligent and consistently edifying.

[The] 'in between state' is the common denominator of this collection, the theme on which the 13 essays are a variation. Certainty, the book suggests, is an illusion. Real life exists in the gaps.

As public definitions of identity relax, are challenged, and at least not in-hiding as a matter of routine, a look at this matrix of fluidity and perception is welcome.

... at once journalistic, philosophical, and personal.

In her forthright first essay collection, Kisner explores a variety of topics, from adolescence to mental health, relationships, and religion.

Astute, perceptive forays into America’s nooks and crannies.

Debut author Kisner explores the religious, emotional, and cultural underpinnings of contemporary U.S. society in a neatly poised, sympathetic, and refreshingly unpreachy collection of 13 essays. With the comforting presence of an open-minded, deeply curious narrator, Kisner attempts to come to grips with some of the stubborn mental habits of modern Americans: an inability to accept death, a penchant for piousness, and a damaging insistence on whiteness as the norm. Her essays...are sharpest when Kisner explores distinctions of inside and outside. Those moments stand out especially when Kisner deconstructs attitudes toward the body.