Donika Kelly

Donika Kelly is the author of the poetry collections The Renunciations (Graywolf Press, 2021), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry; and Bestiary (Graywolf 2016), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Award for Poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her poetry has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Publishing Triangle Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, and longlisted for the National Book Award. Kelly earned an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. She lives in Iowa City and is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.