Donika Kelly

Kelly was born in Los Angeles, California in the early 1980s and moved with her family to Arkansas in the late 1990s. Her family still lives there.^[1]

In 2005, Kelly received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Southern Arkansas University.^[2] She received a Master of Fine Arts from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin in 2008.^[3] Her thesis was called The White Meat.^[3]

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, where she specialized in American literature and film studies.^[1] 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.^[4]

Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Foglifter, The Paris Review, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.^{[5][6][7][8][9]} She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.^[10]

Bestiary is the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award.^[11][12] It was longlisted for the National Book Award in 2016.^[13] It was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Publishing Triangle Award in 2017.^[14][15]

The Renunciations won the 2022 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry.^[16] It was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.^[17]

Kelly is a Cave Canem Foundation Graduate Fellow.^[18][9] She is the recipient of a Lannan Residency fellowship and a fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.^[19][20] She received a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry, and won the 2025 Pushcart Prize.^[21][22]

Kelly is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.^[5][20][23] She has previously taught at the City University of New York's Baruch College and St. Bonaventure University.^[3][24]

She lives in Iowa with her wife, the writer Melissa Febos.^[25][26]

• National Book Award, Longlist, 2016^[1]
• Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, June Fellow, 2004
• James A. Michener Fellow in Writing, 2005–2008
• Provost's Graduate Fellowship, Vanderbilt University, 2008–2013
• University Fellowship, Vanderbilt University, 2008–2013
• Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, 2009, 2011, 2013
• Thomas Daniel Young Award for Excellence in Teaching, Vanderbilt, 2013
• Bayard Rustin Advocacy Award, Office of LGBTQI Life, Vanderbilt, 2015
• Cave Canem Poetry Prize, Winner, 2015^[11]
• Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 2022^[27]
• National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry, 2023
• Pushcart Prize, 2025

• 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