Kelly Grace Thomas Biography

KELLY GRACE THOMAS is the winner of the 2017 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor from Rattle and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and a Best of the Net nominee. BOAT/BURNED, her debut collection, is forthcoming from YesYes Books. Kelly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming: The Los Angeles Review,  Tinderbox, Nashville Review, The Boiler, Sixth Finch, Muzzle, Rattle, PANK, decomP, Spry and more. Kelly was also a 2016 Fellow for the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop.

Kelly also works to bring poetry to unserved youth as the Manager of Education and Pedagogy for Get Lit: Words Ignite.  She is the co-author of Words Ignite: How to Explore, Write, and Perform Classic and Spoken Word Poetry and helped develop Get Lit’s UC approved year-long curriculum.

She will be presenting Get Lit’s pedagogy the AWP (2018) with Patricia Smith, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Mila Cuda and Raul Herrera.

Kelly is passionate about helping other writers develop their voice. She has worked for the past five years as a creative writing instructor and poetry coach. During this time Kelly and her team won three poetry championships, and were finalist each year. Kelly has also coached writers who have performed at Dodger Stadium and the Library of Congress. She has helped edit and refine writing and performances prepared for icons such as Gloria Steinem and Maria Shriver. Her students’ work has also appeared on Button Poetry and in the Huffington Post.

She lives in the South Bay with her boyfriend where she is also working her debut novel Only 10,001.

Visit Kelly’s website: www.kellygracethomas.com