Kelly Cherry



Kelly Cherry (born December 21, 1940) is an author, poet, and the Poet Laureate of Virginia,(2010–2012). A resident of Halifax, Virginia,

Life
Cherry was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but moved to Ithaca, New York at age 5, and Chesterfield County, Virginia, at age 9.

Early career


Cherry graduated from the University of Mary Washington in 1961, did graduate work at the University of Virginia as a Du Pont Fellow, and received a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She began teaching at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1977. Kelly Cherry is the Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Later career
She retired in 1999, after 22 years (23 in Madison), and in retirement continues to hold those titles while also holding named chairs and distinguished writer positions at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Colgate University, Mercer University, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Hollins University.

She has received numerous literary and academic honors. Cherry continues to give numerous public and private readings, often teaming with other notable Poets Laureate of Virginia such as Claudia Emerson and Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda.

She has published reviews widely, including for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Book Review, the Minneapolis paper, the Hollins Critic, America magazine, the Women's Review of Books, the London Independent'', and others.

Personal life
Kelly Cherry is married to Burke Davis III; together they live on a small rural farm in central Virginia.

Teaching positions in retirement

 * Rivers-Coffey Distinguished Chair, Appalachian State University
 * Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Writer-in-Residence, Hollins University
 * Master Artist, Atlantic Center for the Arts
 * Ferrol A. Sams, Jr., Distinguished Chair in English, Mercer University
 * NEH Visiting Professor in the Humanities, Colgate University
 * Eminent Scholar, University of Alabama, 1999-2004

While at U of Wisconsin

 * Wyndham Robertson Writer-in-Residence, Hollins University
 * Distinguished Professor, Rhodes College
 * Full Professor and Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, Western Washington University

Other positions and posts

 * Member, Electorate, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, NYC (five-year term beginning 2009)
 * Associated Writing Programs Board of Directors (1990–93)
 * Discipline Advisory Committee for Fulbright Awards (1991–94)
 * Advisory Editor, Shenandoah (1988–92)
 * Contributing Editor, The Hollins Critic (1996–present)

2012

 * October 26. Book and Author Dinner, Rappahannock Community College campus. Warsaw, VA.
 * October 19–21. James River Poetry Festival, Richmond, Va. Also, Library of Virginia celebration.
 * August 18. Sow's Ear, Winchester, Va.
 * August 12. Reading for VCCA, Washington, D.C.
 * June 27–30. International Short Story Conference. Reading. Little Rock, Arkansas.
 * March 30. Longwood College. Friends of the Library. Farmville, VA.
 * March 28. Blackbird Reading/VCU, Fiction, Richmond.
 * March 21–25. Festival of the Book. Charlottesville, VA Opening Session and reading, March 21.
 * February 29–March 3, 2012. 2012 AWP Annual Conference & Bookfair. Chicago, Illinois. Two Panels.
 * February 16. Newport News. Poetry.

2011

 * October 12. Library of Virginia. Richmond, VA.
 * September 24–25. National Book Festival. Washington, DC.
 * June 3–5. University of University of Mary Washington. Reunion Weekend 2011. Special poetry session featuring three Virginia Poet Laureate: Kelly Cherry, class of 1961; Claudia Emerson, class of ; and Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, class of 1969.
 * June 9. Word Works. National Park Service at the Rock Creek Nature Center Planetarium. Washington, DC. Kelly Cherry with Jacklyn Potter, and young poets, Trevor Bobola & Julia Holemans

Writing
Kelly Cherry is concerned with philosophy; with, as she explains it, "the becoming-aware of abstraction in real life--since, in order to abstract, you must have something to abstract from." Within her novels, the abstract notions of morality become her focus: "My novels deal with moral dilemmas and the shapes they create as they reveal themselves in time," she once told CA. "My poems seek out the most suitable temporal or kinetic structure for a given emotion." Writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1983 on Cherry's fiction, Mark Harris concluded that "she manages to capture, in very readable stories, the indecisiveness and mute desperation of life in the twentieth century."

From the beginning of her career, Cherry has written both formal verse and free verse. According to the citation preceding her receipt of the James G. Hanes Poetry Prize by the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 1989, "Her poetry is marked by a firm intellectual passion, a reverent desire to possess the genuine thought of our century, historical, philosophical, and scientific, and a species of powerful ironic wit which is allied to rare good humor." Reviewing Relativity, Patricia Goedicke noted in Three Rivers Poetry Journal that "her familiarity with the demands and pressures of traditional patterns has resulted...in an expansion and deepening of her poetic resources, a carefully textured over- and underlay of image, meaning and diction." Mark Harris felt that Cherry's "ability to sustain a narrative by clustering and repeating images [lends] itself to longer forms, and 'A Bird's Eye View of Einstein,' the longest poem in [Relativity], is an example of Cherry at her poetic best." Reviewing Cherry's collection, Death and Transfiguration, Patricia Gabilondo wrote in The Anglican Theological Review that "the abstract prose poem 'Requiem' that closes this book...translates personal loss into the historical and universal, providing an occasion for philosophical meditation on the mystery of suffering and the need for transcendence in a post-Holocaust world that seems to offer none. Moving through the terrors of nihilism and doubt, Cherry, in a poem that deftly alternates between the philosophically abstract and the image's graphic force, gives us an intellectually honest and deeply moving vision of our relation to each other's suffering and of God's relation to humanity's 'memory of pain'."

Recognition
Cherry was named Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor Bob McDonnell in July 2010 for a two-year term.

Awards

 * 2012  Recipient of the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize
 * 2012    Rebecca Mitchell Taramuto Short Fiction Prize for "On Familiar Terms," Blackbird at www.blackbird.vcu.edu
 * 2011  The Bravo!Award by the Chesterfield Public Education Foundation, Chesterfield County Public Schools in Virginia, USA
 * 2010   Director’s Visitor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey
 * 2010   The Ellen Anderson Award (first recipient) from the Poetry Society of Virginia
 * 2009   Finalist (with Marvin Bell and Mark Jarman) for The Poets' Prize
 * 2002 Book of the Year Award by ForeWord Magazine, Silver Prize for Poetry, for Rising Venus.
 * 2000   Bradley Major Achievement Award (Lifetime), Council for Wisconsin Writers
 * 2000   Distinguished Alumnus Award, University of Mary Washington
 * 2000   Dictionary of Literary Biography Award for the best volume of short stories (The Society of Friends: Stories) published in 1999
 * 1992   USIS Arts America Speaker Award (The Philippines). USIS is now called the USIA
 * 1992, 1991   Wisconsin Arts Board New Work Awards
 * 1991   First Prize for Book-length Fiction, Council for Wisconsin Writers (for My Life and Dr. Joyce Brothers)
 * 1991   Wisconsin Notable Author, Literary Committee of the Wisconsin Library Association
 * 1990   VCCA Writers Exchange with Soviet Writers' Union
 * 1990, 1987, 1983   PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards
 * 1989   Hanes Poetry Prize given by the Fellowship of Southern Writers for a body of work, first recipient.
 * 1980   First Prize for Book-length Fiction, Council for Wisconsin Writers (for Augusta Played)
 * 1974   Canaras Award for first novel, Sick and Full of Burning

Fellowships

 * 2009   Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, USA
 * 2005   Fellow, Le Moulin à Nef, Auvillar, France
 * 1994   Hawthornden Residency Fellowship, Scotland
 * 1991, 1988, 1984   Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowships, USA
 * 1989, 1979   Fellow, Yaddo
 * 1986   Fellow, The Ragdale Foundation, USA
 * 1979   National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, USA
 * 1978   Fellow, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, USA. Also, 1985; 1986; December–January 1987/1988; 1989; December–February 1990/1991; 2003; 2004; 2007; 2011 (Weinstein Fellow)
 * 1975    Allan Collins Fellowship, Bread Loaf, USA

Publications
Kelly Cherry has written over 25 fiction and non-fiction books, eight chapbooks and two translations of classical plays.

Fiction

 * My Life and Dr. Joyce Brothers, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, (1990); reprinted by University of Alabama Press, (2002).
 * LSU Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-8071-2966-1
 * Sick and Full of Burning, Viking Press (1974); Ballantine (1975); reprinted by Boson Books(1995)
 * The Lost Traveller's Dream, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, (1984)
 * Augusta Played, Houghton Mifflin, (1979), ISBN 978-0-395-27573-3; Louisiana State University Press, (1984)
 * We Can Still Be Friends, Soho Press, (2003) hardback; (2004) trade paper, ISBN 978-1-56947-323-8
 * The Society of Friends: Stories, University of Missouri Press, (1999)
 * Conversion, Treacle Press, (1979)
 * Conversion, Treacle Press, (1979)

Non-fiction

 * The Globe and the Brain: On Place in Fiction, Talking River Publications, Lewis-Clark State College, (2006)
 * History, Passion, Freedom, Death, and Hope: Prose about Poetry, University of Tampa Press, (2005)
 * The Poem: An Essay, Sandhills Press, 1999
 * Girl in a Library: On Women Writers and the Writing Life, BkMk Press/University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2009, ISBN 978-1-886157-66-8
 * The Poem: An Essay, Sandhills Press, 1999
 * Girl in a Library: On Women Writers and the Writing Life, BkMk Press/University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2009, ISBN 978-1-886157-66-8

Translated

 * Antigone (trans.), in Sophocles, 2, ed. by Slavitt and Bovie
 * Octavia (trans.), in Seneca: The Tragedies, Vol. 2, ed. Slavitt and Bovie

Publications in Prize Anthologies

 * Best American Short Stories. 1972
 * Prize Stories: The O. Henry Award. 1994.
 * The Pushcart Prize. 1977.
 * New Stories from the South. 1989, 2009.

2009 to present

 * Elliot, Okla. What Kelly Cherry Knows. "An Embarrassment of Riches". Inside Higher Ed BlogU. Inside the Education of Ornate Churm. August 4, 2011.
 * Alger, Derek. "From the Editor: Interview with Kelly Cherry". PIF Magazine. October 1, 2010.

Poetry Readings
Kelly travels and gives lectures & poetry readings throughout the state of Virginia, and across the United States of America and in Europe. Below is a partial listing: