About Me

Eleanor Kedney is the author of the poetry collection Between the Earth and Sky (C&R Press, 2020), a finalist for the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and the 2020 Best Book Awards, and the chapbook The Offering (Liquid Light Press, 2016). Her book Twelve Days From Transfer  is forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press (2024.) Eleanor's poems have appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including Connecticut River Review, Many Mountains Moving, Miramar Poetry Journal, Mudfish, New Ohio Review, Pedestal Magazine, The Fourth River, The New York Quarterly, Sliver of Stone Magazine, and Under a Warm Green Linden. She has contributed to the anthologies The Cumberland River Review: The First Five Years (Trevecca Nazarene University, 2018), Borders and Boundaries (Blue Thread Press, 2017), and The Writers Studio @ 30 Anthology (Epiphany Editions, 2017), among others. Kedney is the recipient of the 2019 riverSedge Poetry Prize (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) and a finalist in the 2020 Mslexia Poetry Competition. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Fjords Review for "A Park Bench in Prague" and Best of the Net for "The Wielding" by RockPaperPoem. An earlier version of her manuscript “Twelve Days from Transfer,” was a finalist in the 2018 and the 2017 Press 53 Award for Poetry, a semi-finalist in the University of Wisconsin Press 2018 Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in poetry and received honorable mention in the 2016 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize. Eleanor was a longtime student of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz, founder and director of The Writers Studio. In 2005, she founded the Tucson branch and served as the director for ten years. She taught all class levels for the program, including the first Tucson Master Class. Based on craft techniques utilized in her books, Eleanor developed "The Writing Toward Forgiveness" Workshop. Eleanor currently serves on the board of the Tucson Poetry Festival. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Stonington, Connecticut, with her husband, Peter Schaffer, their dog, Fred, and cat, Ivy.