About Kelly: Bio and Books
from my now defunct personal website on WordPress
First the books:
A Poetry Collection June 2025 from SFAPress (Texas A&M Press):
Anyone who has seen the film Spotlight will find a powerful poetic companion in this poetry collection. What Trammels the Heart casts new light on the clergy cover-up and grapples with the assaults that abruptly ended so many childhoods and ruined so many lives. Compounding the devastation of the pedophilia scandals was the later confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and the ascension of the religious right. While a parent's complicity might be the most shattering companion piece within this text, the author ultimately attains a semblance of personal redemption while honoring the testimony of the victims and challenging centuries of entrenched religious abuse. Tamupress.
I Have the Answer, A Short Story Collection (Wayne State University Press 2020):
2021 Midwest Book Award Finalist in the short story category for I Have the Answer.
2021 Eric Hoffer Category Finalist in the short story category for I Have the Answer.
Garden for the Blind, A Novel-in-Stories (Wayne State University Press 2015):
“A collection of extraordinary stories by an extraordinary writer, “Garden For the Blind” is very highly recommended for community General Fiction and academic library Literary Fiction collections.” ~ Midwest Book Review, Fiction Shelf
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“Each of Kelly Fordon’s stories is perceptive, memorable and moving. I loved this book, and I will be haunted by its recurring characters for some time to come.” ~ Julia Glass, Author of the National Book Award-winning, Three Junes.
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“Garden for the Blind is one of the most intricately and beautifully constructed works of fiction I’ve read. It is full of characters and interiors that are so fully realized they are impossible to think of strictly on the page. This is both an intense and page-turning adventure over which you will linger with awe at the precision and grace of its sentences and images. Kelly Fordon is a writer to admire and to keep an eye on, and this work is one I’m never going to forget.” ~ Laura Kasischke, author of Mind of Winter and Space in Chains.
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“A strikingly atmospheric and psychologically acute collection of linked stories about the long-lasting reverberations of a childhood accident.”
~ Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation
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“Fordon’s beautifully rendered stories chart the terrible tensions created by polarities in race, gender, and social class and the efforts of one young woman, in particular, to transcend those divides and figure out what it means to be a moral human being.”
~ Eileen Pollack, author of Breaking and Entering. Former director of the master of fine arts program at the University of Michigan.
2015 IPPY Bronze Medalist in the Short Story Category, Garden for the Blind.
2015 Midwest Book Award, finalist, Garden for the Blind
2015 Michigan Notable Book, Garden for the Blind.
2015 Foreword Review Indiefab Finalist, for Garden for the Blind.
A Poetry Collection, (Kattywompus Press, 2019)
Goodbye Toothless House, a Poetry Collection (Kattywompus Press, 2019)
2020 Eyelands International Prize, finalist in poetry, Goodbye Toothless House.
2019 Eric Hoffer Finalist in Poetry, Goodbye Toothless House. KattywompusPress.
Kelly’s Bio:
Kelly Fordon’s new poetry collection, What Trammels the Heart, was published by SFAPress in June 2025. The latest short story collection, I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020), was chosen as a Midwest Book Award Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. Her 2016 Michigan Notable Book, Garden for the Blind (WSUP), was an INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, an Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press, 2019), was an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. It was later adapted into a play by Robin Martin and published in The Kenyon Review Online. She runs a fiction podcast called “Let’s Deconstruct a Story” and a poetry blog called My Personal Favorite.