Kelly Dalke is a writer and teacher based in New Hampshire. Her work has been published in The Adroit Journal, New Overland Review, Litro, and elsewhere. She was also recently named a 2025 Luso-American Fellow with the DISQUIET International Literary Program. She is at work on her debut novel and story collection.

Her novel, 3000 Miles Home, is a haunting road trip novel about three generations of Portuguese-American women searching for home after a tragic loss, and as they unpack family stories and their own mental health, each experiences a coming-of-age.

Her collection, Prey, thematically follows the gritty experiences of women from girlhood through old age, exploring themes such as the oversexualization of young girls, motherhood, class, ageism, and loneliness, all set against the backdrop of the political tensions of our time. A group of young girls fight the adult predators of the desert as they transform during puberty into a wild pack, banning together to protect one another; a first time mother grapples with her cultural identity as a second generation American during her baby shower at the VFW; a young woman physically becomes the objects men are turning her into while she attempts to work her way out of the working class; an old woman fights off her loneliness with a mouse living in her house, who she believes is the reincarnation of her late husband. 

Kelly received her MFA in writing from the University of New Hampshire, where she worked with Dawnland Voices 2.0, an online literary magazine for Indigenous writers of New England, and was the Arts Editor for Barnstorm Literary Journal. Kelly has taught in various schools, such as the University of New Hampshire, St. Paul’s School, Johns Hopkins CTY, and Grubstreet, a Boston-based nonprofit writing center. During that time, she worked with professors and writers on their manuscripts, including consulting and editing essays in Morrison’s Goodness and the Literary Imagination: Harvard’s 95th Ingersoll Lecture with Essays on Morrison’s Moral and Religious Vision. She was recently Head of Faculty at US Performance Academy, an online middle and high school for high-performing athletes, and is now a Guide Manager at Khan World School, where, in partnership with Khan Academy and ASU Prep, she is designing curriculum and teaching in an online, mastery-based model for high school honors students.