Rin Kelly

Rin Kelly covers the Martin Luther King Jr. Towers in Harlem, Manhattan.

She has been a published author since childhood, when her fiction work appeared in the Denver Post. Moving into high school, Rin’s fiction writing gave way to rebellion, and she put out a one-off underground newspaper that thumbed its nose at the school’s administration. She says it didn’t do much but get her in trouble.

After leaving high school, Rin traveled around the country, taking classes at various colleges and living in her car while working at a coffee shop in Boston. She eventually transferred to Eugene Lang College of the New School University, where she studied literature, political economy and writing.

Since graduating from the New School, Rin has worked as a professional freelance writer and photographer while developing a book she describes as a “satirical, revisionist dystopic novel.” Her work has appeared in publications across the country, including magazines, alt-weeklies and a variety of Bay Area News Group newspapers. She has produced segments for syndicated Pacifica Radio national affairs program “Letters and Politics” and worked on a cross-border corruption investigation at the Investigative Reporting Program at U.C. Berkeley.

Rin is a fellow at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University. She says she wants to study “structures and systems that drive the world.” Her main focus will be as a watchdog, focusing especially on corruption, money and politics.