Kelly Cherry is the author of twenty-two books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction; nine chapbooks; and translations of two classical plays. Cherry’s 22nd full-length book is a collection of linked stories titled A Kind of Dream (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014). Forthcoming from Stephen F. Austin State University Press this fall is A Kelly Cherry Reader, containing stories, novel excerpts, essays, and poems, with an introduction by Fred Chappell. Her collection of unlinked stories, Twelve Women in a Country Called America, is forthcoming from Press 53 in spring 2015, and her tenth chapbook, Physics for Poets, from Unicorn Press. Cherry is the former Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and she was awarded the Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry in 2012. Other honors include the Hanes Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Rockefeller Foundation, and a USIS Arts America Speaker Award to the Philippines. Cherry serves as a member of the Electorate of Poets Corner at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City.  

Photo by Burke Davis III