Alumna Returns to Give Poetry Reading

Poet Kelly (Gruver) Davio ’04, managing editor of the Los Angeles Review, will read selections from her book “Burn This House” Wednesday, March 20, at 7 p.m. in Westmont’s Hieronymus Lounge at Kerrwood Hall. Davio will be preceded by Westmont student poets Riley Hall and Paul Anderson. The event is free to the public.

“Even as an undergraduate, Kelly showed uncommon promise as a writer,” says Paul Willis, Westmont English professor and Santa Barbara poet laureate. “Since then, it has been a pleasure to watch her make her way with real assurance in the world of poetry.”

Davio, an associate editor of Fifth Wednesday Journal and a reviewer for Women’s Review of Books, is a Pushcart nominee whose work has been honored in Best New Poets. Her poems have been published in many journals, including Gargoyle, the Cincinnati Review, Bellingham Review, the Evansville Review, the Portland Review and Pank.

Davio examines her upbringing in the fundamentalist Christian church in “Burn This House,” her debut poetry collection. Born and raised in Central California, Davio studied English at Westmont and earned a Master of Fine Arts in poetry at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, Whidbey Writers’ Workshop.

She lives with her husband, Peter Davio ’04, in Seattle, where she teaches English as a second language to high school students.