MARY TORRE KELLY 1176 ST. LOUIS PLACE ATLANTA, GEORGIA 30306 404/872-0934 noonie@mindspring.com BIO 2019 Mary Torre Kelly grew up in South Florida at the dawn of the Cuban Revolution. She studied literature and art at Florida State University, and earned a Bachelor Fine Arts Degree from the Atlanta College Of Art. She attended the Iowa Summer Writing Workshop in 1989, and, in 1990, won a tuition grant to Emory University Writers' Institute for her fictional memoir, GUAVA DREAMS, then a work-in-progress. In 1997, she attended the New York State Writers' Institute at Skidmore to workshop her unpublished novels. Based on GUAVA DREAMS, she was awarded a Tennessee Williams Scholarship in 1998 to attend the Sewanee Writers' Conference. THE TELEVISIONARY won her a tuition grant to attend the Squaw Valley Writers’ Conference in 2000. She was a semi-finalist in the New Millennium Awards for her short story THAT AWFUL FAMILY, and a 2001 finalist in The New Century Writer Awards for the screenplay of THE TELEVISIONARY. In 2008, her short story LOVE ON THE SIDELINES was filmed as a short movie (LOVE BIRDS) screenplay written by Sarah Martin, at Boston University. She was awarded a space in fiction at the 2008 Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. Before becoming a writer, Mary was an artist, and then a top million dollar sales agent, who raised her two kids on Real Estate. In 1984, Mary published her first short story, THE FLAMINGO AND THE SNOWMAN in TOUCHSTONE magazine. In 1985, she won a Redbook short story prize for HOLDING HARMLESS. Mary has since published short stories in PLEIADES, THE SUN, GRASSLANDS REVIEW, BLACK RIVER REVIEW, THE SOUTHERN HUMANITIES REVIEW, POETS, ARTISTS & MADMEN, NEW SOUTH REVIEW, MANZANITA, and others. In 2004 GUAVA DREAMS, a fictional memoir, was published in a P.O.D. edition Mary is a guest reader-speaker at June Akers Seese’s Memoir Class at Callanwolde, in Atlanta, and makes time for book club groups reading GUAVA DREAMS. She is always working on short stories, and tweaking her new novel, an urban fantasy, THE LIFE OF DEATH SHOW.
