Kelly Cherry

Kelly Cherry is the former Poet Laureate of Virginia (2010 –2012) and is the author of twenty-six books, ten chapbooks, and two translations of classical drama. She is an Emeritus Member of Poets Corner at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City, and was the first recipient of the Hanes Poetry Prize from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her many other awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation, a Bradley Achievement Award, the William “Singing Billy” Walker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Southern Letters, the L.E. Phillabaum Poetry Award, the Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry, and a USIS Speaker Award (the Philippines). She is the Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin Madison, and a University of Alabama in Huntsville Eminent Scholar, 2001-2005. She and her husband live on a farm in Virginia.