Kelly Ferguson

Dr. Kelly K. Ferguson began her journalism career when she applied for a position as a music critic only to be assigned a column, “Charm School Reject.” She has since hustled her way into publications such as mental­­_floss magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Cincinnati Review, Witness, Terrain.org and others. Her book, My Life as Laura: How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself, details her quest in a prairie dress for her Midwestern childhood idol.

Kelly’s interests include longform, immersion journalism, the researched essay, and working with narrative tools such as character, image, telling detail, tension, and plot to craft compelling true stories. She teaches magazine feature writing and the News and Information Capstone, which produces an issue of Southeast Ohio magazine over the course of a single semester.

Kelly has moved from southern Louisiana to southern Ohio, back to southern Louisiana, on to southern Utah, before returning to southern Ohio, where she nurtures one asparagus plant with the hope of it yielding a tender spear in two to three years. 

Kelly has an MFA from the University of Montana and a Ph.D. from Ohio University, both in creative nonfiction.