Kellam Ayres’s debut poetry collection, IN THE CATHEDRAL OF MY UNDOING (Gunpowder Press, 2024), was chosen by Gary Soto as the winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2024 New England Book Awards and the 2024 Vermont Book Awards. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, Guernica, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Her work has received support with grants and residencies from the Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Studio Center. She works for the Middlebury College Library and serves as the liaison to the Bread Loaf School of English and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences. She’s a graduate of both the School of English and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and lives with her family in rural Vermont.