Before embarking on a writing life, Margot Anne Kelley spent a long career in academia, where she taught literature, writing, photography, and art and literary theory at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Her books include A Gardener at the End of the World, which won the Maine Nonfiction Award in 2025 and was a co-winner of the John N. Cole Award for Maine Nonfiction, and Foodtopia: Communities in Pursuit of Peace, Love, & Homegrown Food, which was a finalist for the Maine Nonfiction Award in 2023, a Civil Eats Book Pick for 2022, and winner in The Readable Feast’s Socially Conscious Category in 2022. The Meadow (with Barbara Bosworth), was shortlisted for Paris Photo/Aperture’s Photobook of the year and was selected as one of Time Magazine’s Best Photobooks of 2016. Earlier books, in which Kelley combined photography and writing, include A Field Guide to Other People’s Trees and Local Treasures: Geocaching Across America. Her essays have appeared in publications including Fourth Genre, Terrain.org, Blue Lyra Review, Fourth River, The Catch, and others.

Until 2016, Kelley was very active as a visual artist. Her projects have appeared in galleries throughout the United States, among them AXIOM Gallery (MA), the Berman Museum of Art (PA), the Center for Creative Photography (AZ), Copley Society of Art (MA), Sam Lee Gallery (CA), and the SOIL Cooperative Art Gallery (WA). From 2016 to 2019, she was the Editor in Chief of the literary journal The Maine Review.

In 2017, she and her husband Rob co-founded the Saint George Community Development Corporation (StGCDC), a non-profit that works to ensure residents of their town have what they need to live well. Along with running a food pantry, clothes closet, wood bank, and other essential services, the StGCDC hosts community-wide events like an annual Thanksgiving dinner and an appreciation celebration of the many folks who volunteer their time and talent at the StGCDC.

Kelley lives in Maine. Learn more at margotannekelley.com