Writers@Grinnell Welcomes Melissa Febos and Donika Kelly

Melissa Febos and Donika Kelly will read from their work and discuss writing on Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021, at 8 p.m. in the Grinnell College Museum of Art.

The event can also be viewed via Zoom.

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir Whip Smart and two essay collections: Abandon Me, a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist and Publishing Triangle Award finalist, and Girlhood, a national bestseller, which was released on March 30. Catapult will publish a collection of her craft essays, Body Work, in March 2022. A recipient of the Jeanne Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary and of fellowships from MacDowell, Bread Loaf, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The BAU Institute, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Foundation, and others; her essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Believer, McSweeney’s Quarterly, Granta, The Yale Review, Tin House, The Sun, and The New York Times Magazine. She is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program. 

Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations and Bestiary. Bestiary is the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and a founding member of the collective Poets at the End of the World. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and Foglifter. She is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing. 

In addition, Febos and Kelly will lead a roundtable discussion which is free and open to the public at 4:15 p.m. in Humanities and Social Studies Center, Room S1325.