Journalist and professor Jean P. Kelly believes in the power of stories, both hers and others’, to give hope, build faith, and improve communities. She regularly contributes essays, cultural commentary, and feature stories to national magazines and websites, including U.S. Catholic, Sick Pilgrim. She often explores in her work the intersections of faith, intellect, and writing and reading as forms of prayer. She is currently writing a memoir about her pilgrimages to the geographies and intellectual depths of American Catholic writers and journalists. As a faculty member at Otterbein University in Ohio, Jean puts faith in action through community-based research and service learning storytelling projects in urban neighborhoods.

Posts By This Author

Finding Family in Unlikely Places

by Jean P. Kelly 09-05-2018

This past February, as we have done for years, my daughters and I loaded a crockpot of taco meat, all the fixings, serving utensils, and dessert into the trunk of my SUV. My two busy teens claimed they had too much homework to stay long, so they drove a different car to the nearby town where we’d eat with homeless families.