Kelly Sargent
Author & Artist
Kelly Sargent
Author & Artist
I have loved languages in multiple forms since I was a child. Whether it be through written, spoken, or visual means, engaging with the desire we have to connect with each other and ourselves has been a lifelong endeavor.
I feel privileged to share samples of my writing and artwork with a welcoming audience.
Bio
Born hard of hearing and adopted in Luxembourg, Kelly Sargent grew up with a deaf twin sister in Europe and the United States. She wrote for SIGNews, a national newspaper for the Deaf, and worked in educational settings with deaf students.
Her poems and artwork, including a 2021 Best of the Net nominee, have appeared or are forthcoming in more than sixty literary publications, including Rattle, Chestnut Review, and Typehouse Literary Magazine.
She is the author of a poetry chapbook entitled Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion (Kelsay Books, 2022), a finalist in the Cordella Press Poetry Chapbook Contest and a 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Award nominee.
She also wrote Lilacs & Teacups, a book of modern haiku poems. An individual haiku recognized in the international 2022 Golden Haiku poetry contest received a placard in Washington, D.C. Another haiku in 2022 received a Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award for Individual Poems nomination. She serves as Creative Nonfiction Editor of The Bookends Review and as an Editorial Board member of Beyond Words. She also reviewed for an organization whose mission is to make visible the artistic expression of sexual violence survivors.
Publications, current and forthcoming, include:
Akitsu Quarterly, Ancient Paths, Awakened Voices, Beyond Words, Bivouac Magazine, Book of Matches, Cerasus Magazine, Chestnut Review, Discretionary Love, Ephemeral Elegies, Eucalyptus & Rose, Eunoia Review, Failed Haiku-A Journal of English Senryū, first frost, The Five-Two, Frogpond, Front Porch Review, Gyroscope Review, Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 2022, Haikuniverse, Halcyon Days, The Heron’s Nest, Kingfisher Journal, Kitchen Table Quarterly, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Magnets and Ladders, Modern Haiku, Moss Piglet, Musing Publications, Newfound, New Note Poetry, One Art: A Journal of Poetry, One Sentence Poems (Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press), The Orchards Poetry Journal, Poetic Sun, Poetry Life and Times, Poetry Pea Journal, Presence, Prolific Press, Prometheus Dreaming, Prospectus, Prune Juice, The Purpled Nail (Underwood Press), Rattle, redrosethorns magazine, Rue Scribe, Sheepshead Review, Sparks of Calliope, Stardust Haiku, Stone Poetry Journal, Transient Journal, tsuri-dōrō, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Vita Brevis Press, Wales Haiku Journal, Wingless Dreamer, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Your Daily Poem, and more.
Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Reunions, and Twins magazine.
Residing in picturesque Vermont with her family, she also enjoys writing stories for children. A children’s book entitled Sundae Sundays is due out in March 2023.
Seeing Voices:
Poetry in Motion
by Kelly Sargent
A poetry chapbook includes reflections on
twinhood, deafness, and “the mirrors through
which we see, lose, and find ourselves again.”
(Kelsay Books, 2022)
Kelly Sargent makes her story the heart of
Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion as she shares realms of experience many of us have never known. Born with a twin sister who is deaf - the poet says “her eyes were her ears” - they are adopted into a military family. Sargent, also having a significant hearing impairment, and her twin learn to communicate with “handheld voices.” She writes with deep love as her poems record their bond… The stories are poignant, heartfelt, and richly poetic.
-Tricia Knoll, author of Checkered Mates
Lilacs & Teacups
by Kelly Sargent
~ a book of modern haiku poems ~
Available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon
Selected works
Writing
”After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
Phillip Pullman
Sundae Sundays
by Kelly Sargent
Every Sunday for twenty-three years, jolly “Sundae Man” with his crooked white mustache and bright blue flecks in his green eyes has been making ice cream sundaes for anxious families, though why he does so has remained a decades-old mystery. As a helpful distraction from her worry over her baby brother, a little girl becomes Sundae Man’s eager weekly assistant, jotting down ice cream requests and putting stemmed cherries atop towering sundaes. One afternoon, while helping him fill orders with hot fudge, butterscotch syrup, sprinkles and crushed cookies, the little girl solves the mystery to her great delight. This touching story illustrates the deep, lifelong bonds of family, and creatively offers connection, comfort, and reassurance concerning time spent away from loved ones.
Release date: March 2023
Selected works
Art
Hope
Awakened Voices
charcoal and pastels
