Kellie Richardson – Author

Kellie Richardson
Author

Kellie Richardson is a writer, artist, and educator born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. Kellie’s work primarily explores themes of love, loss and longing, with particular attention to how those themes intersect with Black American humanity. Kellie’s relationship with art is defined by the metamorphosis that happens when art is a liberatory practice. As Tacoma’s Poet Laureate from 2017-2019, Kellie leveraged her role to experiment with form, incorporating collage and interactive performance into her poetry. She created and curated three Tacoma Summer SOULstice Festivals, an event centering LGBTQ and BIPOC artists. Each of Kellie’s projects are another re-invention and re-imagining of form and technique. Kellie has published two collections of poetry, What Us Is and The Art of Naming My Pain, both published by Blue Cactus Press. She believes her work has one purpose: to be used as a tool for liberation and healing. Sometimes through provocation or confession, other times through belly laughs or tears, Kellie works to celebrate the beauty and power of everyday folk and put some funk into the dread we call survival.

Kellie is currently working on her third collection of prose and poems, building on her “Alchemy” series initially started during as she reimagined life after leukemia. Her work can be seen and followed on Substack (https://substack.com/@wordspaperpaint) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/wordspaperpaint/) .