Donika Kelly

Donika Kelly is an Assistant Professor of English specializing in poetry writing and gender studies in contemporary American literature, at the University of Iowa. She is the author of the chapbook Aviarium, published with fivehundred places in 2017, and the full-length collections Bestiary (Graywolf Press 2016) and The Renunciations forthcoming from Graywolf Press in May of 2021.

Bestiary is the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for poetry, and the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and was long listed for the National Book Award in 2016 and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Publishing Triangle Award in 2017.

Donika earned her MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. She is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, the recipient of a Lannan Residency fellowship, and a fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Paris Review, Foglifter, and The New Yorker among other journals and magazines.[1]

Biography

Early years

She was born in Los Angeles in the early 1980s and moved with her family to Arkansas in the late 1990s.[2]

Education

In 2005, Kelly received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Southern Arkansas University. She received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Texas in 2008. Her thesis was called The White Meat. In 2009, she obtained a Master of Arts from Vanderbilt University. Her thesis, Framing the Subject in Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia, analyzed Natasha Trethewey's book on Ernest J. Bellocq's photography, specifically those of unnamed mixed-race prostitutes. Kelly finished her Ph.D in English Literature from Vanderbilt University in August 2013. Her dissertation was titled Reading against Genre: Contemporary Westerns and the Problem of White Manhood. In it, Kelly explains how the way in which society perceives the role of white men is largely influenced by the way they are portrayed in media, with a particular focus on contemporary Western films.[3]

Awards and honors
  • National Book Award, Long List 2016[2]
  • Cave Canem Poetry Prize, Winner 2015
  • Bayard Rustin Advocacy Award, Office of LGBTQI Life, Vanderbilt 2015
  • Thomas Daniel Young Award for Excellence in Teaching, Vanderbilt 2013
  • Cave Canem Graduate Fellow 2009, 2011, 2013
  • Provost’s Graduate Fellowship, Vanderbilt University 2008–2013
  • University Fellowship, Vanderbilt University 2008–2013
  • James A. Michener Fellow in Writing 2005–2008
  • Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, June Fellow 2004

Bibliography
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Poetry
Collections
  • Bestiary. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Graywolf Press. 2016. ISBN 9781555977580.
  • Renunciations. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Graywolf Press. 2021. ISBN 9781644450536.
List of poems
Title Year First published Reprinted/collected
From the catalogue of cruelty 2020 Kelly, Donika (January 6, 2020). "From the catalogue of cruelty". The New Yorker. 95 (43): 22–23.
  • "Aviarium" 500 Places, 2017
  • "Bedtime Story For The Bruised Heart", "Cartography As An Act of Remembering", "The Three Birds Of The Milky Way" and "Labyrinth," Sinister Wisdom, 2017
  • "The Oracle Remembers the Future Cannot Be Avoided", "Gun Control (Mama)", and "Primer: D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths", Tin House, 2017
  • "In the Chapel of St. Mary’s" and "Self-Portrait in Labyrinth", Washington Square, 2017
  • "Partial Hospitalization", Buzzfeed Reader, 2016
  • "Love Poem: Chimera", Gulf Coast, 2016
  • "Construction", "Revelation: Black Bear", "Revelation: White Bear", and "Pony", Rockhurst Review, 2016
  • "Bower Bird", "Swallow", and "How to be alone", Virginia Quarterly Review, 2016
  • "Love Poem: Centaur" and "Love Poem Mermaid", Pleiades, 2016
  • "Fourth Grade Autobiography", Nashville Review, 2016
  • "Handsome Is", "Little Box", and "Love Letter", Gris-Gris, 2016
  • "Acheron" and "Hymn", Cincinnati Review, 2015
  • "Ocelot", Eleven Eleven Journal, 2015
  • "Statistics", Rove, 2015
  • "A Man Goes West and Falls Off His Horse in the Desert" and "Self-Portrait as a Door", Tupelo Quarterly, 2013
  • "Arkansas Love Poem", The Best of Kore Press, 2013
  • "Love Poem: Griffon", West Branch, 2013
  • "Last rites", RHINO, 2013
  • "Tender" and "What Gay Porn Has Done for Me", Bloom, 2012
  • "Love Poem: Minotaur" and "Sonnet in which only one bird appears", Vinyl, 2012
  • "The Yard", "Love Song", "Whale", "Arkansas Love Song", and "Where she is opened. Where she is closed", The Feminist Wire, 2011
  • "Archaeology" and "Perhaps you tire of birds", Crazyhorse, 2011
  • "Whale", Hayden’s Ferry Review, 2011

Theses
  • Framing the subject in Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia (MA). Vanderbilt University. 2009.
  • Reading against genre : contemporary Westerns and the problem of white manhood (PhD). Vanderbilt University. 2013.

Sources
  • Kelly, Donika (2013). Reading against Genre: Contemporary Westerns and the Problem of White Manhood
  • Kelly, Donika (2009), Framing the Subject in Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia
  • http://donikakelly.com/

References
  1. "Donika Kelly | English | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | The University of Iowa". english.uiowa.edu. Retrieved 2021-01-18.
  2. "A Conversation Between Nikky Finney and Donika Kelly" (Nikky Finney interviews Donika Kelly), Los Angeles Review of Books, November 14, 2016.
  3. "Reading | Donika Kelly", Bnnington College, November 2, 2016.
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