Kelly Grace Thomas

KELLY GRACE THOMAS is the winner of the 2017 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor from Rattle, a 2018 finalist for the Rita Dove Poetry Award, a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Next nominee. Boat Burned, her first full-length collection, is forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2020.

Kelly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Best New Poets 2019, the Los Angeles Review, Tinderbox, Nashville Review, Sixth Finch, Muzzle, DIAGRAM and more. Kelly has received fellowships from Tin House, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Kenyon Review Young Writers’ and more.

Kelly currently works to bring poetry to underserved youth as the Education and Pedagogy Advisor for Get Lit-Words Ignite. She is the co-author of Words Ignite: Explore, Write and Perform, Classic and Spoken Word Poetry (Literary Riot). This textbook and curriculum is currently taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District using poetry to target English intervention skills. Kelly teaches editing workshops both in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. She is currently a reader for Tinderbox Poetry Journal.

Kelly is also a screenwriter, Magic Little Pills, a romantic comedy written by her and her sister, Kat Thomas, was recently selected for the Atlanta Comedy Film Festival. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, Omid, and is currently working on her debut novel, a YA thriller titled Only 10.001.