Kelly is the author of the chapbook Aviarium (500 Places, 2017) and the full-length collection Bestiary (Graywolf, 2016). She is the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for poetry and the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Bestiary was also long listed for the National Book Award and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, she earned her MFA in Writing from the Michener Center for Writers and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. She is an assistant professor at St. Bonaventure University, where she teaches creative writing.