Updated 3/17/22

Kelly bought The Fountain in January 2008 after managing it since 2000 and she has been a professional independent bookseller since 1989.

Kelly has served many terms on the board of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance and has served as president for the same organization twice.   She works often with the American Booksellers Association serving on various committees and is a regular speaker at bookseller gatherings on topics ranging from brand building to utilizing the newest technologies for bookstores.  Kelly is also on the advisory council for Bookshop.org for 2022.

In 2019 she was awarded one of three Booksellers Without Borders fellowships to the Turin Book Festival where she addressed Italian booksellers on the topic of Amazon's effect on the American bookselling market and the potential threats posed by Amazon on international markets in the future.  She also toured Italian bookstores of all kinds and met with booksellers, publishers, and media representatives to talk about challenges in the book industry common to both countries.  

And she drank a lot of Aperol cocktails.  

She loves to talk to folks about books, audiobooks, and the book business, food and bev, business and management theory in general (a real geek about that, actually), cats, overproduced action movies, and life in general.  Just ask!!

She's an omnivore of a reader, rarely refusing to at least try reading any category of book. Unfortunately, we also suspect she eats them.