Review How To Wait bears witness to patience. It’s a patience few of us will ever know, which is precisely why this collection is so important. Entering into these poems equips us to smash the barriers we’ve built in front of our own willpower, and inspires us to be as ready and tenaciously patient as the speaker who is willing to “wait to pick up the falling pieces.”~Cameron Conaway, author of Malaria, Poems, an NPR Best Book of 2014 “When names are finally recycled, / everyone will have / a piece of me,” Erin Kelly writes in her debut collection. Kelly writes of reliance on others (“the hand of aid / from your junior high past / [sweeping] the bed sheets / off your warm body”) and isolation (“too many friends living in different zip codes”), but she also celebrates desire (reading “the stars / like a second language”) and the intellectual freedom that allows her to create fire with her words, the “matchbox still hot from my hand.” Readers of How To Wait are fortunate to have this piece of her.~Erin Murphy, author of Ancilla and Distant Glitter Voice. Voice. Voice. Writing well, writing with clarity, is challenging. Writing fearlessly is even more difficult. But a true voice, an authentic voice, will not be silenced. It will claim its space in the world of words and art. Erin Kelly’s voice has that fearless, true, unstoppable quality. The poems in How To Wait come out of, confront, grapple with the complicated journey of a life, of Kelly’s life. They do so with honesty, with courage, with a fierce vulnerability. They do so with language that is crafted and considered. The result is a poetry that is at once intimate and expansive. Sometimes the world she renders is lit only by a single match. Sometimes a blinding sun scalds all. Always, there is her voice.~Steven Sherrill, author of The Minotaur Takes His Own Sweet Time About the Author Erin M. Kelly's path to becoming a writer began with a simple box of crayons she had as a child. Her mind went on autopilot as her hand drew brilliant streaks of blue, red, and every other color of a rainbow. She utilized her creativity as a way to not only learn to live with her diagnosis of cerebral palsy, but to understand it. Most of all, she wanted to be seen, heard, and understood. Erin's willingness to learn about the craft of writing and editing has led to her chosen career. She is a now writer, journalist, columnist, freelance editor and poet who enjoys writing in all genres. She wants to be recognized for her work rather than her disability. Her work has been published by The Huffington Post, Upworthy, The Mighty, The Good Men Project, Wordgathering Poetry Journal, XoJane, and Oberon Poetry Magazine.