She grew up in the Laurentian region of Quebec. Her work as an English teacher has brought her to Switzerland, France, and the UK, and she has spent close to a year living in Ireland, on the island of Inis Mór. Kelly’s first collection of poems, Small Fires (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, the Concordia University First Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal. The French-language version of Small Fires, translated by Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagné, is forthcoming in 2018. Kelly has been a recipient of a CBC Literary Award, and her poetry has been broadcast on national radio in Canada. She holds a Master’s degree in English and Creative Writing, and is currently pursuing her PhD in Humanities at Concordia University in Montreal.