Kayleb Rae Candrilli

“Though writing feels most often like a solitary act, when it is born into the world, it becomes a small part of our collective…My writing becomes a small part of the queer collective, of the trans experience, of the rural experience.”

Kayleb Rae Candrilli’s (they/their) poetry balances transgender rights and environmental justice in work that focuses on the body as a constantly changing environment unto itself. Informed by their experience as a trans person from rural America, their work both interrogates “an inhospitable American landscape” for queer people and identifies and celebrates the joys of trans experience. They have published three books of poetry: Water I Won’t Touch, All the Gay Saints, and What Runs Over, which won a Whiting Award and a Pamet River Prize and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Candrilli has earned a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, an Art and Change grant from the Leeway Foundation, and poetry prizes from Frontier Poetry and Peach Mag, among others. Candrilli holds an MFA and MLIS from the University of Alabama and an MA and BA from Penn State University.