Wellspring Literary Series: Kelly Fordon

Kelly Fordon has published two award-winning short-story collections: I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020) and Garden for the Blind (WSUP, 2015), and two poetry collections: What Trammels the Heart (SFAPress, 2025) and Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press, 2019). Her novella, Nine Days Left, is forthcoming in 2027 from Cornerstone Press. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review Online, The Boston Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Rattle, and The Saturday Evening Post, among others. She has just finished up a stint as the Spring 2026 Resident Fellow at VCCA’s Moulin à Nef campus in France.

The Wellspring Literary Series is an annual reading series in downtown Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Founded, facilitated and hosted by Robert Fanning, poet and Central Michigan University Professor of English, the series features Michigan writers or regional writers with Michigan ties. Since 2008, the series has brought some of the finest poets and writers to Mount Pleasant from across the state.

Each reading, the crowd is treated to not only readings by some of Michigan’s most prominent voices reading poetry, fiction and non-fiction along with Central Michigan University students, but these evenings also feature music by local musicians and students and faculty of the School of Music.