Headshot of poet Donika Kelly

Donika Kelly is the author of the chapbook Aviarium (500 Places, 2017), The Renunciations (Graywolf, 2021), and Bestiary (Graywolf, 2016), winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for poetry, and the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Bestiary was also long listed for the National Book Award and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, she earned her MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers and a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. She teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa.