| Kelli Russell Agodon was born and raised in the suburbs of Seattle. Her childhood home had a view of Mt. Rainier from her parents’ bedroom and the neighborhood power plant from her's. Two of her neighbors were named “Elmer,” a fact she finds amazing, given that she has yet to meet another Elmer since. She spent her high school years taking classes such as “Late Arrival” and “Early Dismissal” and missing most of Mr. Neimic’s geometry class since she had to stand out in the hall for talking. Though she focused more time on being a social butterfly than an academic, she somehow graduated on the honor roll and ended up at the University of Washington majoring in English with a writing emphasis. After graduating from the UW in ’92, she found a job at a publishing company where she had the ridiculous, but paying job of writing ad copy for coupon books. Later, she began work on a new project called Sidewalk.com with Microsoft that would offer information about local restaurants on this new and strange place called “the Internet.” After four years and an inspiring trip to London to retrace the steps of other writers who had lived there, Kelli realized corporate America was not for her and decided to return to the work she loved. Six months from being fully vested, she quit her job, moved to a small seaside community with her husband and began to focus on her writing. She has not looked back since. Since moving out of the city, Kelli has published two books of poems, Small Knots (Cherry Grove Collections) and Geography, winner of the 2003 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. She's received two Washington State Arts Commission /Artist Trust GAP grants and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Kelli’s work has been featured on NPR's The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, the ABC News website for National Poetry Month and with Seattle's Poetry & Art on the Busses project. She's was awarded a writing residency at Soapstone Writers Retreat in Oregon and a DOT Small Sparks Grant. In 1999, she was also one of fourteen writers from Washington state chosen to participate in Seattle's Jack Straw Writers Program and that same year, her film poem, "Walking Home" was chosen to premiere on opening night of the Seattle Poetry Festival. Her poems have also appeared in places such as The North American Review, Rattapallax, Parnassus, the Seattle Review, 14 Hills, The Adirondack Review, Calyx, Crab Creek Review, the ABC News website, Red, White & Blues: Poetic Vistas on the Promise of America Anthology edited by Ryan Van Cleave and Virgil Suarez (University of Iowa Press), the print anthology of Poets Against the War edited by Sam Hamill (Nation Books). Recently, Garrison Keillor published her poem "Snapshot of a Lump" in his second poetry anthology, Good Poems for Hard Times (Viking Press, 2005). Kelli is the Poetry Editor for the online literary journal, Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism. As a Regional Coordinator for United Poets Coalition/Poets for Peace, she coordinated the Poets for Peace: Mission 911 readings in Western Washington raising funds for the American Red Cross after the September 11th attacks. Currently, she is working on her second manuscript of poems and enjoying the view of Mt. Rainier from the ferry.. |
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