2023 National Judge

Kelly Grace Thomas is a poet, editor, educator, and an ocean-obsessed Aries from Jersey. Her first full-length collection, Boat Burned, was released with YesYes Books in January 2020. She is the winner of the 2020 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize and the 2017 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor, a finalist for the 2018 Rita Dove Poetry Award, a semifinalist for the 2021 Nimrod Poetry Award, and a multiple-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

Kelly’s poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Best New Poets, 32 Poems, Los Angeles Review, Muzzle, Sixth Finch, and more; she has received fellowships from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and the Kenyon Review Young Writers’ Workshop. She is currently a MFA candidate and Blackburn Fellow at Randolph College.

Kelly works as curriculum consultant for Get Lit-Words Ignite and other nonprofits. She is co-author of the Literary Riot books Voices in Verse: Poetry, Identity and Ethnic Studies; Stanzas of America: Celebrating BIPOC Poetry; and Words Ignite: Explore, Write and Perform Classic and Spoken Word Poetry, which are currently taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, daughter, and sister.