Kelly Cherry

Kelly Cherry has published twenty-five books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, ten chapbooks, and translations of two classical plays. Her most recent title is Quartet for J. Robert Oppenheimer (poetry). Forthcoming this fall is Temporium, a book of short-shorts and flash fiction. She was the first recipient of the Hanes Poetry Prize given by the Fellowship of Southern Writers for a body of work. Other awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bradley Major Achievement (Lifetime) Award, a USIS Speaker Award (The Philippines), a Distinguished Alumnus Award, three Wisconsin Arts Board fellowships, the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook Award for Distinguished Book of Stories in 1999 (2000), and selection as a Wisconsin Notable Author. In 2010, she was a Director’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She has recently received the Walker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Southern Letters. A former Poet Laureate of Virginia and emerita member of the Electorate of Poets Corner at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City, she is also Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kelly Cherry and her husband live in Virginia.