An Associate Professor in the Department of English at Columbia College Chicago where she teaches First Year Writing, Cultural Studies and Creative Nonficition, Ames's most recent recent work appears in Water~Stone Review, Off the Rocks, and Q Review. Her hybrid essay—a manifesto—appears in the edited anthology RAW: (Reading and Writing) New Media; she has a co-authored piece in the new collection Resilience: Stories, Poems, Essays, Words for GLBT Teens. Her essay, "Optickal Allusion," was selected by Robert Atwan as a notable essay of 2011. In 2006, she became the first Faculty Fellow for Critical Encounters, the nonhierarchical, volunteer, civic engagement art and activism initiative for the college, and has since been active in collaborative art activist ventures such as The Cradle Project and One Million Bones. She has engaged in drag/queer/story performance in Chicago with Genderfusions (2005, 2007, 2010), Northern Lights (2010), and Second Story (2012, 2010). Ames was a 2012 fellow at the In(ter)ventions residency at The Banff Centre, a 2010 Lambda Literary Retreat Writer's Fellow, and a 2007 Breadloaf Contributor.