Bio of Susan Kelly-DeWitt
Susan Kelly-DeWitt is the author of THE FORTUNATE ISLANDS (Marick Press, 2008). Earlier collections include A CAMELLIA FOR JUDY (Frith Press, 1998), FEATHER’S HAND (Swan Scythe Press, 2000), TO A SMALL MOTH (Poet’s Corner Press, 2001), Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s GREATEST HITS (Pudding House, 2003), THE LAND (Rattlesnake Press, 2005), THE BOOK OF INSECTS (Spruce Street Press, 2003) and CASSIOPEIA ABOVE THE BANYAN TREE (Rattlesnake Press, 2007) and an illustrated short story THE AUDIENCE (Uptown Books, 2007).
Her work has been included in national and regional anthologies such as WHEN SHE NAMED FIRE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY BY AMERICAN WOMEN (Autumn House Press), IN WHATEVER HOUSES WE MAY VISIT: AN ANTHOLOGY OF POEMS THAT HAVE INSPIRED PHYSICIANS (American College of Physicians), CLAIMING THE SPIRIT WITHIN (Beacon Press), I’VE ALWAYS MEANT TO TELL YOU, LETTERS TO OUR MOTHERS (Pocket Books), TO FATHERS: WHAT I’VE NEVER SAID, AN ANTHOLOGY OF LETTERS TO FATHERS (Story Line Press), O TASTE AND SEE (Bottom Dog Press), HIGHWAY 99 (Heyday Books), and WORDS AND QUILTS (Quilt Digest Press, 1996), among others; her poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, North American Review, Rosebud, Cutbank, Nimrod, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Iris, Comstock Review, Oxymoron, Yankee, Runes, Poet Lore, Smartish Pace, Poetry Northwest, Carolina Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Spoon River Quarterly, Hawaii Review and Passages North, among many others. She has been featured on Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily; her other honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, The Chicago Literary Award from Another Chicago Magazine, the Bazzanella Award for Short Fiction and a number of Pushcart nominations. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the Northern California Book Reviewers Association.
Over the years she has worked as a freelance writer and poetry columnist for the Sacramento Bee and Sacramento Union, as the editor of the on-line journal Perihelion and the print journal Quercus; she has been a California Poet-in-the-Schools, the program director of an arts program for homeless women, an educator, and an artist in the prisons. She lives in Sacramento, California, where she is a contributing editor for Poetry Flash, a reviewer for Library Journal, an exhibiting visual artist and an instructor for the University of California, Davis Extension.
Recently she became a blogger for Autumn House Press’s Coal Hill Review. Check it out at: Coal Hill Review
