Dasha Kelly

Dasha Kelly wields her words and wonder as tools for building inspiration and communities. An accomplished writer, artist and entrepreneur, Dasha travels the world as a keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, youth coach and performance artist. Dasha has delivered her signature programs and presentations to teens, co-eds, teachers, social workers, ballerinas, assembly line workers, motivational speakers, book clubs, inmates, church assemblies and writers for more than a decade.

She founded an arts program called Still Waters Collective, which utilizes creative writing and spoken word to shape confidence and leadership with youth across southeastern Wisconsin. Dasha and her students are widely sought for projects and events that intersect arts + activism + personal development. In addition to her youth work, Dasha is an active educator and performer at adult prison facilities.

Dasha has performed on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, in Opium Magazine’s Literary Death Match, at the National Performers Network Conference and with Grammy-nominated Angie Stone, to name a few. Her writings have appeared in anthologies, text books, magazines and online. She’s been a freelance feature writer for Upscale, Black Enterprise and Milwaukee magazines. Dasha’s first novel, All Fall Down (Syntax 2003), earned her a position on Written Word Magazine’s Top Ten List of Up-and-Coming Writers of the Midwest. A featured story from her collection, Hershey Eats Peanuts (Penmanship Books 2009), was a finalist in the Abbey Hill Literary Awards. Dasha’s newest collection, Call It Forth, launches this summer and her second novel, Almost Crimson, will be released with Curbside Splendor Publishing in 2015.

Dasha holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a masters’ degree in Marketing Communications. She traveled to Botswana as an Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy, served as the fourth writer-in-residence for the prestigious Pfister Hotel, and was listed two years in a row on OnMilwaukee.com‘s list of “Top 100 Coolest Milwaukeeans,” where she lives with her two daughters and a cat named Shkoobi.