Collin Kelley (Fiction, Poetry) | Atlanta, GA

Collin Kelley is the author of the The Venus Trilogy of novels – Conquering Venus, Remain In Light and Leaving Paris – published by Sibling Rivalry Press. Remain In Light was the runner-up for 2013 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Fiction and a finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction. His poetry collections include Better To Travel (2003, Poetry Atlanta Press), Slow To Burn (2006, MetroMania Press), After the Poison (2008, Finishing Line Press) and Render (2013, Sibling Rivalry Press), chosen by the American Library Association for its 2014 Over the Rainbow Book List. Kelley is also the author of the short story collection, Kiss Shot (2012, Amazon Kindle Exclusive). A recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year Award, Deep South Festival of Writers Award and Goodreads Poetry Award, Kelley’s poetry, reviews, essays and interviews have appeared in magazines, journals and anthologies around the world.

Books (Fiction)

Books (Poetry)

Chapbooks

• Kiss Shot: Stories (Amazon, 2012)
• After the Poison: Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2008)
• Slow To Burn: Poems (MetroMania Press, 2006; Reissued by Seven Kitchens Press, 2011)

Blurbs, Press & Reviews

“In Kelley’s elegiac, soaring series of poems, we are seduced by his language, invited to join him on his raw and ribald traipsing across the wilderness of his memory. What is rendered is as intimate yet as exposed as your neighbor’s lingerie strung up on a clothesline.”
—Vanessa Daou

Remain in Light ditches the guide books and takes us on a thrill ride tour through the seedy underside of The City of Light. Fraud, squalor, prostitution, the illegal drug trade it s all here. The characters crackle with life, none of them without sin, and each of them seeking some form of absolution. Collin Kelley has crafted a story that will appeal to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons, but I can tell you this, Remain in Light is a first class suspense novel.
—Grant Jerkins, At the End of the Road and A Very Simple Crime

In examining his life through the flash-bulb points of memory — coming out, experiencing heartbreak, wrestling with the angel of death — Kelley creates a truly universal work that discusses the most painful of human experiences bravely and with unflinching honesty.
—The Pedestal

Render is an absolutely beautiful telling of a life in poems: brave, direct, and crafted in short narratives that are both satisfying and disturbing in all the best ways.
—Maureen Seaton

It is a cliche to say of a poet that he writes as if his hair is on fire. Collin Kelley writes as if the world is on fire. And it is.
—Galatea Resurrects

Better To Travel is a force to be reckoned with. This collection moves smoothly and packs a punch, almost like a novel… it is a journey worth taking.
—Lambda Literary Review

Render revolves around the author’s maturation into adulthood and socks us right in our kissers with both the sacred and profane.
—SubtleTea

Filled with what-will-they-say-next characters, a suspenseful pace, and intertwining plots Remain in Light is a wickedly fun read.
—Lambda Literary Review

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