Kythe Heller is an award-winning poet, essayist, interdisciplinary artist, and scholar. She earned a ThD/PhD at Harvard University in Comparative Studies in Religion, with a PhD secondary field in Literary Arts, Film, and Visual Studies/Critical Media Practice. Previously, she received an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School, an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and a BA in English Literature from Reed College
Recently published work includes a collection of poems, Firebird (Arrowsmith), nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award, an edited collection of literary translations, essays, and visual art, The Soul Conveys Itself in Shadow/El alma se mueve en la sombra (Stenen Press, co-edited with Carolina Gómez-Montoya), winner of the Independent Press Book Awards, writing and intermedia works including Thunder Perfect Mind (with photographer Meka Tome) and Rite of Spring (with Meghan McNealy), and several critical studies of medieval and contemporary mysticism and spirituality, phenomenology of the senses, poetics, and socially-engaged arts, in Arvo Pärt’s White Light: Media, Culture, Politics (Cambridge University Press), Quo Anima: Innovation and Spirituality in Contemporary Poetry (Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics), “The Heart Receptive of Every Form: Representations of Fire in the unio mystica of Mahomet (Mi’raj-Nameh (1436) Manuscript)” (Harvard Divinity School Graduate Journal), and poetry and essays in The American Poetry Review, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, The Southern Review, and others.. She has received fellowships and grant awards from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, to support a fellowship at The MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, The Mellon Foundation, Harvard University, and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Film, music, performance, and installation work has been screened and exhibited at festivals in the United States and Canada.
She is also the founder and creative director of Vision Lab, a global art and research collective based at Harvard Divinity School and creating work to address contemporary spirituality, social and environmental justice, and technology. She edits the international art and culture journal Forecast, and is a faculty member of Bard College's Language and Thinking Program.