Patricia Killelea
Associate Professor
Ph.D. Native American Studies, University of California at Davis
M.A. Creative Writing, University of California at Davis
pkillele@nmu.edu
Teaching Interests:
- Poetry & Poetics
- Film
- Experimental Literatures
- Native American Literatures
Patricia Killelea is a writer and poetry filmmaker living in Watersmeet, Michigan. Her poetry films have been officially selected and screened at REELpoetry/HoustonTX: International Poetry Film & Video Festival, FOTOGENIA Film Poetry & Divergent Narratives Festival, Det Poetiske Fonoteque: Nature & Culture Poetry Film Festival, the Ó'Béal International Poetry-Film Competition, and a finalist for the Frame to Frames Ekphrastic Poetry Film Prize. Other poetry films have received Honorable Mention at the Midwest Video Poetry Fest and were longlisted for the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival.
She is a contributing writer for Moving Poems, and her poetry films & essays on videopoetry craft have been featured at FENCE, Poetry Film Live, and Atticus Review, and recently published in the bilingual print anthology Poem Film Imprints Vol. 1, Frame to Frames : Your Eyes Follow II/Cuadro a Cuadros : Tus Ojos Siguen II (ekphrastic poetry + films/cine + poesía ecfrástica) (2024).
Her most recent poetry collection, Solace: Poems from the Northwoods, was selected by Pulitzer-Prize winning author Diane Seuss for the Summit Series Prize for Michigan Writers and will be published by Central Michigan University Press in 2026. She is also the author of Counterglow (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2019), and her poems have appeared in literary journals such as Seneca Review, Quarterly West, The Common, cream city review, Sky Island Journal, Barzakh, Waxwing and elsewhere. She is Poetry Editor at the literary journals FENCE and Passages North, and Director of the Master’s of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing here at Northern.
Patricia earned her Ph.D. in Native American Studies (2015) and Master’s in Creative Writing (2008) from the University of California, Davis. Her teaching practice in the area of Native American literature centers contemporary Great Lakes Native Nations authors, tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, history, and literary craft. If you are looking for Anishinaabe and Great Lakes Indigenous perspectives, please refer to Northern Michigan University’s Center for Native American Studies.
