Kiera Gerety

Kiera Jacqueline (née Janoski) Gerety was born to Andy and Wendy Janoski in Erie, Pennsylvania, on November 11, 1991. She spent her early childhood in an old farmhouse in Brown Hill, Cambridge Springs. A sister soon followed, and the family moved through Union City and Edinboro during a tumultuous few years. After her father’s home was destroyed in a fire, the family reunited and rebuilt on a quiet, two-acre lot surrounded by cornfields and dirt roads—the place Kiera would come to call home.

Her sibling Anthony was born the following year. For a time, the family relocated to Bunce Hill Farm in Centerville, where her brother Jacob was born. It was in that farmhouse that Kiera penned her first fan fiction and created her first fantasy world. After her parents divorced in 2004, Kiera, her mother, and siblings moved into the house her parents had built in 1997, alongside her grandmother, Alice, who lovingly named it “The Quilt House”—a name that has stayed with it ever since.

From sixth grade through high school, Kiera participated in arts courses at Allegheny College through the gifted and talented program, falling in love with both visual art and creative writing. After graduating from Cambridge Springs High School in 2010, she studied Arts Administration with a concentration in visual arts at Waynesburg University, developing a passion for hand-built clay sculpture. That same fall, after the death of her cousin Ryan and other personal struggles, Kiera began spiraling into alcoholism and addiction. The aftermath of those years ultimately led her to leave college in January 2013.

She woke up sober on April 25, 2013, in a rehab facility—her first sober day in over two and a half years.

Since then, Kiera has remained deeply involved in recovery, despite the detours of relapse and the ache of trying to pass for “normal.” Some of her loneliest years were spent in service; some of her freest were, too. In August 2013, she moved into sober living in Pittsburgh and found home in the Carrick, Brookline, and Mt. Lebanon neighborhoods. She waited tables, tended bar, found sanctuary at the Carnegie Art Museum, and slowly fell back in love with art.

In 2017, a breakup brought her back to The Quilt House. That May, her grandmother suffered a massive stroke. Kiera remained home, caretaking and working as a cook at Brian’s Country Market. She threw herself into her beliefs, recovery work, and magical practice. On Imbolc 2021, she wrote her first poem in years—and has never stopped writing since.

Kiera now lives in Kansas City. She is an avid gamer, a Dungeon Master at heart, and continues to write nearly every day. Ink, Blood, and Prayer is her first poetry collection. She has three additional anthologies in progress, and three works of prose underway.