Karen E. Wohlwend is an assistant professor in the Literacy, Culture, and Language Education Department in the School of Education at Indiana University. Her research reconceptualizes play as a literacy for reading and writing identity texts and as a tactic for participating and learning in early childhood classrooms. Wohlwend is the author of Playing Their Way into Literacies: Reading, Writing, and Belonging in the Early Childhood Classroom as well as numerous articles and chapters that provide a critical perspective on children’s play and new literacies, popular media, gender, and identity.