Kelly Cherry

Kelly Cherry is the author of twenty-six books of fiction (long and short), poetry, memoir, essay, and criticism, and her 27th comes out in a couple of weeks. She has also published eleven chapbooks and translations of two classical dramas. Her most recent titles are Quartet for J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Poem, Beholder's Eye: poems, and the forthcoming Temporium: Before the Beginning to After the End, which she says was a ton of fun to write. Her books also include Twelve Women in a Country Called America: Stories and The Retreats of Thought: Poems. Her newest chapbook is "Weather," beautifully produced by Rain Mountain. Her A Kind of Dream (interlinked stories) was selected by Library Journal as a Best Indie book. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South and has won three PEN/Syndicated Fiction awards. Her story collection The Society of Friends (which, she says, has nothing to do with the Society of Friends) received the Dictionary of Literary Biography Award for Short Fiction for the best collection published in 1999. For her poetry she received the inaugural Hanes Prize for a body of work. Other awards are listed on her Wikipedia page. Her new and selected poems, titled Hazard and Prospect, was a finalist for the Poets' Award. Cherry says, "I write because I have ideas that can be realized only by writing. Luckily, I love to write. And I love to hear from those who read my work and respond to the heart of what I write."