About Me
My name is Jeffrey Kelly, and I'm an early-career journalist and poet from Alabama.
Since I was young, I’ve always been fascinated by storytelling, whether it was the stories heard on the news, from friends and family or read in magazines and books, they’ve always been impactful to me, and I’ve seen how they affect others too.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion, an American novelist and essayist, in her 1979 book of essays, “The White Album.” To me, the need for storytelling is endless; we tell each other stories to hold each other accountable, to caution, encourage, inspire, bring attention, remember, and more. Stories are an essential part of life.
No matter the form, words have created societal change, promoted creativity, and impacted culture throughout time. With my work in poetry and journalism, I’m striving toward being able to do that in any capacity.
"If prose is a house, poetry is a man on fire running quite fast through it."
Anne Carson