ABOUT CAROL
Carol Keeley's work has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, New England Review, Arts & Letters, Oxford Poetry, Antioch Review, Chicago Magazine, Columbia Poetry Review, The Chicago Tribune, New American Writing, Chicago Reader, and elsewhere. She won First Place for memoir/essay in Writer’s Digest Competition in 2025, and the Susan Atefat Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 2019. She was a finalist for the 2017 Nelson Algren Award and a runner up in Zoetrope’s fiction contest. Keeley was nominated for a 2019 Pushcart.
She taught writing workshops at Columbia College and the University of Colorado. She teaches at Naropa University and offers free writing workshops for veterans.
NEWS & AWARDS
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​Winner of the “The Dead Whale” Writer’s Digest 94th Annual Competition Memoir/Personal Essay
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Published “Murmurations” Ploughshares, Winter 2023-24
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Finalist in the 2020 CRAFT Elements contest
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Semifinalist in the 2020 Sewanee Review Nonfiction contest, judged by Melissa Febos
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Winner of the 2019 Susan Atefat Prize for Creative Non-Fiction, Arts & Letters for "Demon Feeding"
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Finalist in the 2017 Nelson Algren Literary Award Competition for "Errata"
"'Demon Feeding’ [by Carol Keeley] does at least three things really well at one time. It raises our consciousness about PTSD among veterans and the personal hell our government’s decisions create in them; it has a compelling understory and a character we care about—the narrator—who is fighting demons of her own; and it braids those two really seamlessly, using plenty of sensory detail to keep us engaged and even giving us a moment of happiness amidst all the sad spoils of a difficult world. It’s a beautifully made and important essay.”
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- Pam Houston, judge of the Susan Atefat Prize for Creative Nonfiction
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