Writer and editor
Keetje Kuipers (pronounced Kay-tcha Ky-pers) is the author of four books of poems, all from BOA Editions. Her most recent collection,
Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (2025), was the winner of the Isabella Gardner Award. Her first book,
Beautiful in the Mouth, was selected by Thomas Lux as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Named one of the top ten debut poetry books of 2010 by Poets & Writers, her first book also appeared in the top ten on the contemporary poetry bestseller list. Her second collection,
The Keys to the Jail (2014), was a book club selection for The Rumpus, and her third book,
All Its Charms (2019), was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and includes poems honored by publication in both
The Pushcart Prize and
Best American Poetry anthologies.
Keetje’s poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in over a hundred journals and magazines, including the New York Times Magazine,
Poetry Magazine, The Yale Review, American Poetry Review, Orion, Kenyon Review, and The Believer. Her poems have also been featured as part of the Academy of American Poets’
Poem-a-Day series, and read on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac.
Keetje has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellow in Poetry at Bread Loaf, the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, and the recipient of fellowships from the T.S. Eliot House, Storyknife Writers Retreat, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Jentel Artist Residency Foundation, and PEN Northwest’s Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, among others.
Keetje was appointed Editor of Poetry Northwest in 2020. Her recent editorial initiatives include the founding of the
James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, which is awarded for two outstanding poems, each written by an Indigenous U.S. poet. The prize is named for Blackfeet and Gros Ventre writer James Welch, whose
early poems were featured in Poetry Northwest and who went on to become one of the region’s most important writers.
Keetje frequently teaches at writers conferences and at MFA programs across the country, most recently as a visiting professor at the University of Miami and at the University of Montana. Previously, she was an Associate Professor at Auburn University, where she was also Editor of Southern Humanities Review. While there, she founded the
Auburn Witness Poetry Prize in honor of Jake Adam York and directed the reading series at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art.
In 2022, Keetje was honored to be one of the judges of the National Book Award in poetry. From 2021-2024, she served on the board of the
National Book Critics Circle, finishing out her term there as both VP of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion and VP of Awards. Currently, Keetje enjoys serving on the advisory board for the dual-language writers’ conference
Under the Volcano, located in Tepoztlán, Mexico, where she teaches the poetry manuscript workshop each January. She also co-curates, along with Cate Lycurgus, the
Headwaters Reading Series for Health and Well-Being in Missoula, MT, which is focused on using poetry to build knowledge and trust among community members around vital issues of health, including Native health, women’s and LGBTQ+ health, mental health, and dis/ability.
Keetje lives with her wife and two children in Missoula, Montana, as an uninvited guest on land that is the longtime home of the Salish and Kalispel peoples.
