Kendra DeColo
Current City, State, Country
Birth City, State, Country
Biography
Kendra DeColo is a poet and essayist living in Richmond, Virginia. She is the author of three poetry collections: I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World (BOA Editions, 2021), My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (Third Man Books, 2016), and Thieves in the Afterlife (Saturnalia Books, 2014), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the 2013 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. She is also co-author of the poetry chapbooks Graffitied Heart with Ellen Bass, and Low Budget Movie with Tyler Mills. She has curated Poem-a-Day for the Academy of American Poets, and has received awards and fellowships for her poems from MacDowell, Millay, Split This Rock, and a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She has performed her work in comedy clubs and music venues, including the Newport Folk Festival, and she has taught poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and Vanderbilt University.
Published Works
Graffitied Heart: Poems in Conversation and a Conversation, co written with Ellen Bass (Slapering Hol, 2024)
I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers From the World (BOA Editions, 2021)
My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (Third Man Books, 2016)
Thieves in the Afterlife (Saturnalia Books, 2014)
Author Site
Links to Sample Works
The Los Angeles Review, “I Pump Milk Like a Boss”
Ilanot Review, “I Listen to George Harrison’s “Apple Scruffs” After My Miscarriage”
Under a Warm Green Linden, “After the Famous Poet Says He Refuses to Read His Contemporaries Because They Write Secular Poems and He Is Only Interested in Sacred Knowledge”
Video Reading
Education
Sarah Lawrence College, B.A., Poetry and Latin American Studies
Lesley University, M.Ed., Curriculum and Instruction
Vanderbilt University, MFA, Poetry