KelleGroom.com Header
I Wore the Ocean as A Girl Front Cover

Books by Kelle Groom

How To Live: A Memoir

I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl: A Memoir

Spill: Poems

Five Kingdoms: Poems

Luckily: Poems

Underwater City: Poems

 

Bio

Photo of Kelle Groom

[ View Bio ]

How to Live: A Memoir

How to Live: A Memoir 
Tupelo Press, October 1, 2023



Kelle Groom - I Wore the Ocean as A Gril Book Cover

I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl,
paperback, April 2012


           * A Library Journal Best Memoir
           * Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
           * New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice
           * Oprah.com O Magazine selection

 
Kelle Groom - I Wore the Ocean as A Gril Book Cover

SWEDEN (available May 2012)
Norstedts
[ View More ]

“Kelle Groom is a navigator of the soul's voyage, from mooring to mooring, no matter the tumultuous seas. She is a writer of deepest heart and purest eye, who seizes you and takes you where she wanders. How to Live is one of the most beautiful books I know, a profound reckoning"

 Susanna Sonnenberg, author of Her Last Death and She Matters: A Life in Friendships


 
Five Kingdoms: Poems by Kelle Groom Spill: Poems
Anhinga Press 2010
Florida Book Award winner

"Groom's poems often counter-balance pain with a nuanced sense of humor, a humor born of great attention, and this, in turn, rises from a deep well of empathy. Early on, Spill promises-‘If someone much saw open/ my chest I want all this light to be what spills out.’ Kelle Groom promises a gift of light, and the poems in Spill make good on this promise."

Brian Turner

Five Kingdoms: Poems by Kelle Groom Five Kingdoms: Poems
Anhinga Press 2010
Florida Book Award winner

"Kelle Groom's poems are like underwater songs, sung from the submerged continent of the inner life, the life we don't often expose to the outer world, the one we don't speak of. They have the bemused slightly sad knowledge of lived life, but mainly, these poems come from the muse of soulfulness, they are 'tender-minded' -- they balance honesty with perceptiveness of others, which is the true sign of tenderness. They are wry, artful, sad, loving, and moving. A true pleasure."

Tony Hoagland

 
Luckily: Poems by Kelle Groom Luckily: Poems
Anhinga Press, 2006
Florida Book Award winner

"In Kelle Groom's Luckily, tenderness transforms violence: 'A kiss on a cigarette burn." In poems both mysterious and candid, Groom captures domesticity and dream, internal and external landscapes, addiction and recovery. Groom is pitch perfect when it comes to emotional nuance. She constructs flawless images about our miraculous, vulnerable bodies. Luckily is a fierce and important book."

Denise Duhamel

 
Underwater City: Poems Kelle Groom Underwater City: Poems
University Press of Florida, 2004

Underwater City is a book of gifts and revelations. Kelle Groom becomes a poet we can trust as we await surprise after surprise. Reading this book encourages the heart of the reader to believe, once again, in the majestic environment created from great poetic achievement."

Ray Gonzalez

“Kelle Groom is a navigator of the soul's voyage, from mooring to mooring, no matter the tumultuous seas. She is a writer of deepest heart and purest eye, who seizes you and takes you where she wanders. How to Live is one of the most beautiful books I know, a profound reckoning"

 Susanna Sonnenberg, author of Her Last Death and She Matters: A Life in Friendships

If any memoir has a pulse running through it, if any work of art contains within it the potential of transcendence, it is in your hands. I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of A Girl begins in a kind of glorious, terrible, ridiculous chaos, but then as we get closer and closer to its heartbreaking center and to the narrator herself, the ‘heavy things’ start falling off – of her, of us – a heaviness we didn’t know we’d even been carrying.  Kelle Groom has somehow found a container for each bright, hard spark of this life.”

Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and The Ticking is the Bomb

"Gorgeous, poetic language ... is the backbone of this unflinching look at a life saved by forgiveness. Are you a human being? Read this book!"

Starred pre-pub review, Library Journal

"Groom’s stunning memoir reads more like poetry than prose and leaves the ‘brain singing with neurons like a city at night.’ . . . . Her astonishing struggle and unique resurrection illuminate the universal human effort to embrace one’s self, accepting personal flaws, demons, and methods of survival.”

Booklist

"In a series of beautifully compressed narratives, Groom, who grapples here with the very meaning of motherhood, describes devastating binges... As heartbreaking as this book is, Groom writes with a captivating urgency. Her salvation, a result of her tireless quest for clarity, will leave you cheering."

 Susanna Sonnenberg, More

"In language as precise and sparkling as the tip of a razor against your skin..."

Will Allison, author of Long Drive Home

 

  Powell's Books Powell's Books SIMON & SCHUSTER amazon.com BARNES & NOBLE BOOKS-A-MILLION INDIE BOUND