As a child, Kelly would hold elaborate one-kid plays for patient relatives, complete with song, dance, and over-the-top melodramatics. Then, whenever Mom or Grandma called for a break, she would venture outside to slay dragons, run from make-believe ghosts and create magical feasts for fairies out of mud and pinecones.
In the third grade, Kelly wrote her first book titled Pink Lettuce, a story about a young girl who comes to the aid of her mad scientist neighbor, helping him to return his potion-pink lettuce patch to its original green and leafy luster.
Kelly holds an undergraduate degree in Theatre Arts and Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Today, she finds true joy in transcribing her dramatic daydreams onto the stage of the blank page. When not writing or curled up with a good book, Kelly can be found teaching, learning and performing the ancient art of Bellydance.
Q: What made you decide to become a writer?
A: “The short (and slightly crazy-sounding) answer to this is that I am a writer by compulsion. I don’t think I could ever stop writing. I have too many ideas and characters haunting my brain and it seems as though they’ve always been there. It’s to the point where I’ve had to ask them all to please take a number, find a seat in the waiting room and chill out until I call on them. Not to mention that I get really cranky if I have to spend a lot of time away from telling their stories. So I think I am a writer out of love for the craft and for telling stories, but also because I just can’t seem to help it!”
Some of Kelly’s favourite books:
– Phantom by Susan Kay (her “most favorite book in the entire world”)
– Shades of Simon Gray by Joyce McDonald
– A Breath of Eyre by Eve Mont
– Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
.. and probably everything Edgar Poe related.
