Kerith E.J. Collins
Essayist, poetess, memoirist.
Kerith writes nonfiction — essays, poems, and memoir — about family, grief, and the tender resilience of ordinary life, from a Twin Cities house loud with four kids, two cats, and one very well-used coffee maker.
Poems & pieces out in the world
A few of the places her work has landed so far.
- Remember to Feed the Dog Poetry, 2026 Frazzled Lit, Issue 4
- Midnight Mythology Poetry, 2025 Silly Goose Press
- The Perfect Storm Poetry, 2025 Half and One
- Into the Deep, Dark Woods Anthology, 2026 Poetry in the WordFire Press anthology, edited by Kevin J. Anderson
- Anxiety Is My Nervous System’s Way of Saying “I Love You” Essay, 2025 Medium
Her poems have also appeared with Wingless Dreamer and Querencia Press.
The blog lives on Substack
Writing; Inspired is where the work-in-progress goes: essays and poems finding their shape, lessons from the writing desk, and what it actually feels like to build a literary life from scratch — front-row seat included, from zero readers onward.
Recent posts:
- Remember to Feed the Dog Aug 2026
- A Little Bit of a Career Update 2025
About Kerith
The short version, with the good parts kept in.
Kerith E.J. Collins is an essayist, poetess, and memoirist writing nonfiction about the things that hold us — family, grief, and the stubborn, tender resilience of the human heart.
A small-town Iowa girl who put down roots in Minnesota, she writes from the Twin Cities in the middle of a full and noisy life: four kids, two cats, and a coffee cup that never stays empty for long.
Before the writing desk, Kerith worked her way through sales, construction inside sales, insurance, recruiting, and retail — whatever kept the bills paid while the writing waited. Every one of those jobs left stories behind.
“Turning ordinary life into poetry.”
Her poems have appeared in Frazzled Lit and Silly Goose Press, among others, and her work is in the WordFire Press anthology Into the Deep, Dark Woods. In October 2026 she was named a finalist for the inaugural Callo Literary Award in Poetry, from Nulla journal.
These days she’s earning what she calls her MBA — a self-directed study of the writing craft, pursued within the walls of her local coffee shops, one refill at a time. She chronicles the whole literary life in public on Writing; Inspired — starting, as her tagline puts it, from zero readers, on the way to somewhere worth the coffee.
Say hello
Poetry talk, essay questions, or just a friendly hello — reach Kerith by email, on socials, or through Substack.