She wears slippers that pass for shoes. You might not notice them at first when Kelsey enters the room and goes about her quiet stage business. She is an unobtrusive observer, possessing the practiced anonymity of a great photojournalist. But if you are lucky enough to get to know her, you will be entertained by her sharp wit, impressed by her creative approach to life, and charmed by her own reluctant joie de vie.

Kelsey credits her Mother for many of her creative and intellectual interests. She describes her life growing up as fanciful, owing mainly to the efforts of her mother, whose spirited ways showed Kelsey how to live a rich and creative life without ever leaving the city of Flint. She was also greatly influenced by her extended family, who were always hanging around the house. Kelsey lovingly describes them as "one DNA line of history textbooks," and refers to her own reading habit as an "hereditary obsession."

Kelsey's reading interests developed in part as an intellectual rebellion against her mother who preferred Modern American authors from the beginning of the 20th century including D.H. Lawrence, James Thurber, and Dorothy Parker. While Kelsey once considered her Mother’s literary and musical tastes maudlin and silly, she now realizes that her own tastes aren't really much different. She enjoys literature from the last turn of the century including English and Irish authors like Thomas Hardy, William Somerset Maugham, and James Joyce, but also enjoys more modern authors like American J. D. Salinger.

Kelsey's reading addiction got her kicked out of ninth grade English after only the second week. She was taken under the wing of Mrs. Swirtz, a wonderful teacher who gave Kelsey the opportunity to follow her own literary interests, and who shared with Kelsey a wild love of literature. Ever since then Kelsey has been greatly disappointed with the rest of her formal education, and is still unsure whether or not she will go to college. Money is one major obstacle, along with Kelsey’s desire to spend what she has saved for college on traveling abroad. Hopefully, wherever she goes, Kelsey will find the creative and intellectual stimulation that she craves.

While she is still unure of what she will do next, or where she will go, Kelsey does have some clear ideas about the more distant future. She imagines herself living in a stone house in the seaside town of Malahide, just outside of Dublin. There with her two cats, and a mildly unattractive husband with a physical appearance not unlike Orson Wells', she will tend to her flowerbeds, make stuffed grape leaves, adopt a few children, and spend her days writing.

profile written by Renée
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