Victoria Kelly was born in New Jersey and graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University. A U.S. Mitchell Scholar, she received her M.Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland and went on to earn her M.F.A. in Creative Writing in 2009 from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Her fiction and poetry have appeared in the anthologies Best American Poetry 2013 and The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, as well as dozens of literary journals, including Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Fiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, and Hopkins Review, among others. Her first poetry chapbook, Prayers of an American Wife, was the winner of the Coal Hill Prize and was published by Autumn House Press in 2012. Her debut full-length poetry collection, When the Men Go Off to War, was published in hardcover in September 2015 by the Naval Institute Press as the Press’s first original poetry publication in their over-100-year history. Her debut novel, Mrs. Houdini, was published by Simon & Schuster (Atria Books) on March 1, 2016.
Victoria is a two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee and has taught Creative Writing at the University of Iowa and Old Dominion University. She lives in Virginia.
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