Kelly Kerwin

Kelly Kerwin is a writer whose work explores how women endure, adapt, and remake themselves in response to inherited damage. Her fiction and poetry draw inspiration from her Midwestern roots, cross-country road trips, and her hobby of restoring vintage furniture—infusing her storytelling with a sense of place, grit, and reinvention. She is the author of SPIN CYCLE, a novel about a teen mother navigating the fallout of an open adoption, as well as the poetry collection HOME REPAIRS, the story collection TOWNIE, the YA novel THE BROWN BAGGERS, and a growing body of personal essays. Kelly’s professional background in securities litigation, merchandising, and nonprofit fundraising—spanning creative production and public engagement—has helped cultivate a disciplined, detail-oriented approach to her writing. She also co-founded Little Home Away From Home, a project with her son that provided handmade dollhouses to women’s shelters for use in play therapy—an experience that echoes the central themes of safe spaces and maternal bonds in her work. Kelly earned a BA in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is a graduate of StoryStudio Chicago’s Novel in a Year program.