Kelly Cherry is the author of many works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation. Her most recent book of fiction is Temporium (Press 53, 2017), and her most recent book of poetry is Quartet for J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Poem (Louisiana State University Press, 2017). Beholder’s Eye, another collection of poetry, is forthcoming from Groundhog Publishing Press in 2018. Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2010 to 2012, Cherry was the inaugural recipient of the Hanes Poetry Prize from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Other honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation, a United States Information Agency Arts America Speaker Award to the Philippines, the Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry, the L.E. Phillabaum Poetry Award, and the Rebecca Mitchell Tarumoto Short Fiction Prize. She was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is the Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin Madison.  

Photo by Burke Davis III