Ever since I was small, I preferred the imaginary and fantastic to reality. Most children do, I wasn’t special, except I never actually grew out of it. What started as forcing my mother to type out my Camelot fan-fic on our old Windows 95 family desktop (since, being a toddler, I could neither read nor spell) has continued into my quasi-adulthood. I write predominately speculative fiction, especially in the realm of YA, and because I find it fascinating to envision a future based on our present.

If you are similarly a big futurism nerd, I also teach a class in speculative literature studies from the late 19th century through today called Futures of the Past and Present at Western Nevada College!

I received my Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing with a focus on fiction from the University of Nevada at Lake Tahoe (formerly Sierra Nevada College). It is a truly one-of-a-kind experience that I can’t recommend enough, especially for those of us who have full-time jobs and families, since it’s a low-res program! I am so grateful to have been able to spend my time in the woods where I developed life-long friendships with my fellow writers who are strewn all about the world.

You can learn more about the program on the blog of one of my former mentors, novelist Peter Mountford!

I was also beyond honored to be selected as a Tin House Scholar for the inaugural 2025 Tin House YA Workshop. It was amazing being able to meet and work with other writers who speak the language of YA across all the genres! Our cohort, (shout out to Hugh’s Angels) still meets virtually regularly.

Tin House was recently purchased, and the workshop has since rebranded as the McCormack Writing Center, which you can learn more about here.

Current Project Bio:

Kelsey is currently working on a speculative YA manuscript born from her MFA thesis project. Once completed, she intends to bring her love of the desert, her fascination with the future, and the potential horrors of unchecked tech-corporation overreach to the masses, landing what would be her ultimate, grandiose achievement: her book series translated into an AppleTV series.

Upcoming events: