Kelle Groom

Kelle Groom's memoir, I WORE THE OCEAN IN THE SHAPE OF A GIRL (Simon & Schuster), is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice selection, a Library Journal Best Memoir, Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Month, Oprah.com O Magazine selection, and Oxford American Editor's Pick. Groom's memoir-in-essays, HOW TO LIVE was published by Tupelo Press in October 2023. Her poetry collections are SPILL (Anhinga Press), FIVE KINGDOMS(Anhinga) recipient of a Florida Book Award and recognized in Entertainment Weekly's "Best New Poetry," LUCKILY(Anhinga) also a Florida Book Award winner, and UNDERWATER CITY, selected for the University Press of Florida's Contemporary Poetry Series. Her work has appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Writer's Almanac, among others, and has been recognized in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Non-Required Reading anthologies. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Library of Congress, Civitella Ranieri, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Millay Colony for the Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, American Antiquarian Society, Ucross Foundation, James Merrill House, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and State of Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. Formerly Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe, Groom is now on the faculty of SNC's low-residency MFA Program. She is a nonfiction editor for AGNI Magazine. Former poetry editor of The Florida Review, she also served as a contributing editor. Groom is a 2020 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Nonfiction and 2014 NEA Fellow in Prose. Formerly, Programs Director at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. (photo: Marion Ettlinger)