Kelly's third novel A Dream Like Mine (1987) won the Governor General's Award for fiction and was made into the movie Clearcut.
A book of poetry, Country You Can't Walk In, won the first Toronto Arts Council Award.
Two other novels with Stoddart followed, Out of the Whirlwind and Save Me Joe Louis, as well as a book of short stories, All that Wild Wounding.
Kelly's work was included in The Thinking Heart: Best Canadian Essays (1991) and The Saturday Night Traveller.
Kelly's papers are in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library archives at the University of Toronto.