About Kelsey, the Writer

Photo Credit: Ida Adamowicz

Kelsey is a Vancouver-based writer, educator, performer, and graduate of the UBC Creative Writing Program. She has had her work featured on the East Van Poetry Salon’s Best Poems list¹, the CBC Non-Fiction Prize Longlist² , the Vancouver Fringe Festival, Nineteenquestions.com³, and local anthology Stay Solid! A Radical Handbook for Youth. Kelsey is the 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 Writer-in-Residence for the Minerva Foundation’s Learning to Lead program.

Beginning her writing career with a two-year column for the South Delta Leader (now the Delta Optimist), Kelsey discovered spoken word poetry in the summer of 2006 and instantly felt a kinship with the form. In 2009, she was one of six poets chosen for the Cultch’s IGNITE! Spoken Word Mentorship Program, . In the same year, she won a spot on the Vancouver Youth Poetry Slam Team and began travelling B.C. with poetry group The Candelabra Collective, opening for such artists as Brendan McLeod and such events as the Campbell Bay Music Festival.  She is the author of four self-published chapbooks: Carnival Wire (2010), Carnival Dark (2011), Torches (2013), and twenty-three/thirty (2017).

A former Editorial Assistant for Prism International Magazine¹ and Communications Coordinator for the Community Arts Council of Vancouver², Kelsey is a long-time host of Open Mic at the Lyceum, a monthly event at Christianne’s Lyceum of Literature and Art³ in which she strives to foster an inclusive space for artists of all disciplines and backgrounds. Kelsey has also worked in various roles for the Verses Festival of Words, supporting the growth of Vancouver’s largest alternative literary festival. Kelsey spent almost a decade with the Vancouver Poetry House’s WordPlay program, facilitating performance poetry workshops in high schools across the province.

She is now working on her debut novel; follow along her journey here.