About

Karla Kelsey is a poet, essayist, and editor whose work weaves together the lyric with philosophy and history. Her poetry books include On Certainty (Omnidawn, 2023), Blood Feather (Tupelo Press, 2020), A Conjoined Book (Omnidawn, 2014), Iteration Nets (Ahsahta, 2010), and Knowledge, Forms, the Aviary (Ahsahta, 2006) selected by Carolyn Forché for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize. Her book of experimental essays, Of Sphere, was selected by Carla Harryman for the 2016 Essay Press Prize and was published in 2017. She is the editor of Lost Writings: Two Novels by Mina Loy, forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2024. Her poet’s novel, Transcendental Factory: For Mina Loy is forthcoming from Winter Editions in 2024.

Poems and creative prose have been published by such journals as Bomb, Fence, Conjunctions, New American Writing, The Boston Review, Verse, and Tupelo Quarterly. Her critical essays on poetry, poetics, and pedagogy have appeared in anthologies and literary journals.

From 2010-2017 she edited The Constant Critic, Fence Books' online journal of poetry reviews. She currently co-publishes with Aaron McCollough SplitLevel Texts, a press specializing in hybrid genre projects. With Poupeh Missaghi she edited the first volume of Matters of Feminist Practice, a journal of feminist criticism published by Belladonna* Collaborative. An H.D. Fellow at Yale University’s Beinecke Library and the recipient of a Fulbright Scholars grant, she has taught in Budapest, Hungary, and is Professor of Creative Writing at Susquehanna University's Writers Institute. 

Contact Karla at karla.kelsey@gmail.com