Keli Stewart

B. 1979
Keli Stewart, a lighter-skinned Black woman with brown braids and wearing a purple dress, is outside with greenery in the background.

Photo credit: Reggie Pulliam.

Keli Stewart (she/her) is an author, educator, and arts activist whose writing has been published in Rhino, Meridians, and WarpLand: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas, among others. Her published works include the full-length collection Small Altars (Bronzeville Books, 2021). She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, an Adrienne Reiner Hochstadt Award, and an Augusta Savage Gallery Arts International Residency. Stewart was a 2021-2022 School of the Art Institute of Chicago Nichols Tower Artist-in-Residence. An alum of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation and Callaloo summer writing workshops, her writing won first place for a Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award from the Illinois Center for the Book. She earned a BA in fiction writing from Columbia College in 2002 and an MFA in poetry from Chicago State University. She is proud to be the founder and executive director of Front Porch Arts Center and founder of WestSide Arts House, for which she opens her historic Victorian home to her community on Chicago’s West Side.