Angela C. Kelly

Angela C. Kelly has been writing since she was tall enough to hit the keys on a manual typewriter. Two of her poems, "Religion" and "Redemption," have been published. "Religion" won the Iliad Press Grand Prize Literary Award in the winter of 2003. Other works have appeared in a variety of independent magazines, newsletters, and websites. Unavailable, her novel-length memoir, and her second book, the fictional Second Best Fantasy, were published by JMS Books in 2011.

Angela lives, breathes, and consumes books. She was employed in the publishing production industry for over a decade and has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Illinois. Later, she returned to the U and earned a master's degree in Library and Information Science. She spends much of her time haunting libraries and local bookstores, always in search of the next piece of inspiring and overwhelming literature to add to her reading repertoire.

In her years of pre-teen angst, Angela spent much of her time writing what she now refers to as her "Die, Love, Die!" poetry. Influenced by the iconic bodies of work of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, the melancholy bled through all of her early writing, as she struggled to find a sense of self in an earlier, anti-LGBTQ era. Eventually her poetic works evolved into a richer, more diverse style.

Today, Angela devours the works of many writers across genres. Her wife was a close friend of the late David Foster Wallace, and several signed paperbacks of his work grace their bookshelves. She is also a devotee of perhaps the most prolific contemporary author alive: Joyce Carol Oates.

Angela currently lives and works thirty miles north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her wife Cindy and their furry four-legged children. She has, on more than one occasion, vowed to one day write her complete memoirs with only a sharp shell in the sand, to be carried away on the memory of the ocean's waves.