Kailey
Sweeney
Author Bio
Kailey A. Sweeney is a Virginia-based writer and chaplain whose work explores the meeting place of faith, identity, and the unseen. Drawing on years of pastoral ministry, hospice and hospital chaplaincy, and community advocacy, her fiction blends elements of Southern Gothic with spiritual realism, attending closely to interior lives shaped by suffering, devotion, and moral struggle. Her writing is informed by lived experience, including a life-threatening illness that reframed her understanding of selfhood and grace. Critics have compared her voice to a convergence of Flannery O’Connor’s stark moral vision and Marilynne Robinson’s contemplative lyricism, where the spectral and the sacramental occupy the same narrative ground. She is the author of the novel “The Chicken Coop Chapel,” inspired by true events surrounding her near death experience. She lives in Virginia, where she writes, offers spiritual care, and walks the rivers that continue to shape her work.
Additional Info
Southern Gothic tradition and spiritual realism, with an emphasis on interior life, moral struggle, and the porous boundary between the ordinary and the unseen. My work draws on experience in pastoral ministry, hospice and hospital chaplaincy, and community advocacy, and is grounded in close attention to voice, place, and the ways belief and identity are formed under pressure. I am the author of the novel The Chicken Coop Chapel, inspired by true events and contemplative tradition. I live and work in Virginia.