Kelly Cherry is the author of twenty books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction; eight chapbooks; and translations of two classical plays. Her ninth chapbook, Vectors: J. Robert Oppenheimer: The  Years before the Bomb, is forthcoming in December 2012 from Parallel Press of the University of Wisconsin Libraries. Her next full-length collection, The Life and Death of Poetry: Poems, is forthcoming from Louisiana State University Press in 2013.  Her recent titles include a collection of short stories titled The Woman Who (Boson Books, 2010), a memoir titled Girl in a Library: On Women Writers & the Writing Life (BkMk Press, 2009), and The Retreats of Thought: Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 2009). Cherry is the former Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Other honors include the Hanes Prize 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, Cathedral Church of St. John, New York City.  

Photo by Burke Davis III