Dr. Kendall Klym
Dr. Kendall Klym has won numerous awards for his short stories, which have been published in literary journals including Puerto del Sol, Hunger Mountain, and Fiction International. In addition to winning the Tartt First Fiction Award for Step Lightly, his collection of short stories, Klym is a three-time honorable mention winner of the Great American Fiction Contest, sponsored by The Saturday Evening Post. In 2017, he was awarded a two-month fellowship at the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, where he completed the first draft of The Man with an Amber Halo, a novel of grief and redemption based on the sudden death of his partner. In 2018, he was awarded a Monson Arts residency, where he completed a second draft. A former professional ballet dancer and newspaper journalist, Klym incorporates elements of dance and journalism in his writing. He holds a Ph.D. in English, with a concentration in Fiction Writing, from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and taught creative writing, composition, and literature full time at Kennesaw State University from 2011-18.
Klym grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, before moving to New York City to study on scholarship with stipend at the prestigious School of American Ballet. When he was 15, his father drove him a total of six hours a day, four days a week, from Connecticut to New York to study ballet. That year, he earned first in his class in high school and rose three levels at the School of American Ballet. Once he moved to New York to study ballet full time, he returned to Connecticut every weekend to see family, tap maple trees, raise bees, hike, and tour historic homes open to the public. Though short lived, Klym’s professional ballet career earned him principal roles in the Kansas City Ballet, Chicago City Ballet, and the Tivoli Pantomimeteatret in Copenhagen, Denmark.
After sustaining multiple and chronic injuries, Klym retired from dance to pursue a career in journalism. He graduated magna cum laude from Baylor University with a BA in journalism and went on to write for papers in Fresno and Carmel, California, and Austin Texas. After graduating from Texas State University with an MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in fiction, Klym began his university teaching career. He taught English at Rockhurst and Friends universities, and the University of Missouri, Kansas City, before receiving a scholarship to study for his PhD at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. While teaching full time at Kennesaw State University, he wrote Step Lightly, a collection of fifteen short stories that challenges and expands the definition of dance.
Klym is also an award-winning baker, an outdoorsman, and a supporter of lively and fine arts. He hikes, camps, reads, swims, dances, and plans excursions to out-of-the-way places. When he is not exercising his sense of discipline that comes directly from studying and performing ballet, he indulges in desserts, many of which he makes from scratch.