poetry, prose & story
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"Instructions for an Animal Body is itself an animal body; the seams, the cover, the binding that holds the pages together are a construct of an emergent identity. This would be a difficult task by any measure, and it is excellently executed by the author in this engaging, rich collection."
~Ralph Pennel, Founding Editor of Midway Journal, author of A World Less Perfect for Dying In Read the full review at Rain Taxi Review Kelly Gray (she/her/hers) lives in Northern California on unceded Coast Miwok and Kashaya Pomo land. She writes about what she knows or is trying to know; parenting, eco-grief, mental health, dead things, monsters, prophetic animals, relationships to self and others, and rural life.
Gray is the author of Instructions for an Animal Body (MoonTide Press, 2021), Tiger Paw, Tiger Paw, Knife, Knife (Quarter Press, 2022), MUD~ Fieldnotes from a Juvenile Psychiatric Institution (BottleCap Press). Her chapbook Quag Daughter is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2023. Gray's audio chapbook My Fingers are Whales and Other Stories of Cetology was created in collaboration with sound magician Meredith Johnson and is available to listen to here. In 2022, Gray was the recipient of the Neutrino Prize for her story "A Note on Sex and Death on the Beach" from Passages North and the Creative Sonoma Cohort Prize which was granted in partnership with Pepperwood's Center for Conservation Science. Her writing has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, Northwest Review, Passages North, Rust & Moth, Newfound, Permafrost and other badass journals & anthologies. Gray lives with her beloved family in an old cabin nine miles and seven fence posts away from the ocean. Occasionally, she teaches workshops for adults who want write with a fever for all that is unsayable. She's thrilled to have been selected to teach with California Poets in the Schools, and is hard at work creating a curriculum based on monsters, edges and lore. "Instructions for an Animal Body is a collection of poems full of intuitive wisdom; somehow ancient and timely at once. They remind us that time has extinguished neither violence nor kindheartedness. They track the small acts of brutality that lead to endless hatred, war, rape, and captivity, while murmuring a more compassionate approach—one that requires listening to softer voices. Gray shows us a restorative pathway for healing from violence, a consciousness-laden vision of reparation and reconstruction that requires a new language. In these poems, she delivers a story in which healing the child heals the mother; healing the mother heals the lover; healing the lover heals the trespasser; healing the trespasser heals the violator. There is hope in this new language that does not rely on capitulation to wrongdoing. Healing the violator might even heal the earth."
~Risa Denenberg, Co-founder of Headmistress Press, for CUlTURAL DAILY Read the full review at Cultural Daily |