Karla Kelsey

Karla Kelsey was born and raised in Southern California. With degrees from UCLA (BA English and Philosophy), the Iowa Writer’s Workshop (MFA Poetry), and the University of Denver (PhD), she is now on the creative writing faculty at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania.

Karla is the author of Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary, which was selected by Carolyn Forche for the 2005 Sawtooth Poetry Prize. It was published in 2006 by Ahsahta Press. Little Dividing Doors in the Mind, a chapbook, was published by Noemi Press in 2005. Her recently completed manuscript, Iteration Nets, is forthcoming from Ahsahta Press. Work from this book can be found in journals such as Denver Quarterly, the New Review of Literature, and Bird Dog. In addition, poems from this manuscript are included in the anthology Joyful Noise: An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry. New poems can be read on-line in Gutcult and Harp & Altar. Two new chapbook projects are recently out from Cannibal’s Narwhal press and Pilot Press.

Along with poetic projects, Karla is involved in essay writing, multi-media performance, and bookmaking. Her essays and reviews have appeared in such journals as Five Fingers Review, Slope, Denver Quarterly, and the Poetry Project Newsletter. She helps to edit Reconfigurations, an online journal of poetry and poetics. Imprint Press, a bookarts collaboration publishes limited edition artists books. The first project is Robert Strong’s Brethren: Order of the Seasons. She is also one of five co-founders and editors of Ponzipo Press, a poetry press collaboration.

Listen to an interview and read new work on-line at Open Loop Press.