Kelly LeFave

Kelly Le Fave's poems are people you'd like to know: well-rounded, welcoming, and possessed of the elusive combination of polish and volubility. They balance self-revelation with mystery, frankness with poise. Her language is shockingly vivid, playful, in love with sound—but also with image and story. Her scope ranges from ancient to modern, popular to sacred, her modes from confessional to playful, and back. Her book manuscript Me Comma You won the 2002 Gibbs-Smith Poetry Prize, and is just out from Gibbs Smith. As well as writing her own poetry, Le Fave is also a founding editor of the delicious quarterly, Jubilat.

Click here to read her Poetry from Image #30.

Click here to see her new book, Me Comma You, on the Gibbs-Smith website.

Current Projects

"Currently, I am caught up in the beginning steps of a new poetry manuscript. I have been experimenting with short prose pieces, but I inevitably transform them into lyric since I don't seem happy with them any other way. I am hoping to work with the structural idea of series, and amalgams of form and voice, in order to expand the length and breadth of individual poems. I continue to be inspired by the anxiety of identity, by the prophetic voice, and by the possibility that the material of spirit can be distilled in poetic language."

Biography

Kelly Le Fave was born in 1959 in Washington, DC. She grew up in Virginia and Maryland and earned her BA from the University of Virginia in 1981. She holds an MA in English Language and Literature from Syracuse University (1990) and an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1999). She has taught writing at Syracuse University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of Utah. She is one of the founding editors of the literary journal, Jubilat, housed at the University of Massachusetts and now in its third year of publication. She lives in Portland, OR with her husband and two children.