Kelli Russell Agodon

Kelli Russell Agodon is the winner of the 2009 White Pine Press Poetry Prize judged by Carl Dennis.  Her manuscript, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, will be published by White Pine Press in the fall of 2010. 

Kelli was born and raised in Seattle and educated at the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University's Rainier Writing Workshop where she received her MFA in creative writing. 

She is also the author of Small Knots (2004) and Geography, winner of the 2003 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award.  Currently, Kelli lives in the Northwest with her family.  She is the co-editor of the literary journal, Crab Creek Review.

Bio

Kelli's work has appeared in magazines and journals such as the Atlantic Monthly, Prairie Schooner, Notre Dame Review, North American Review, Image, 5 a.m, Meridian, Bellevue Literary Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Seattle Woman, Calyx, The Seattle Review, Literary Mama, and many others. 

She is a recipient of two Washington State Artist Trust GAP grants, the James Hearst Poetry Prize, the Dorothy Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the William Stafford Award, the Carlin Aden Award for formal verse, a Soapstone Writer's Residency, and a grant from the Puffin Foundation for her work towards peace and as a poetry editor.

Her poems have been published in many anthologies including Poets Against the War edited by Sam Hamill, Red, White & Blues, Poets on the Promise of America, as well as on NPR’s “The Writer’s Almanac” with Garrison Keillor. 

She is also included in Keillor's second Good Poems for Hard Times anthology published by Viking Press. She edited the Poetry Broadside Series: The Making of Peace and is working on an anthology about motherhood with photographer Elisha Rain.  She is also the co-editor for Seattle's 25 year old literary journal, Crab Creek Review with Annette Spaulding-Convy. 

 Photo by Ronda Broatch
 

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