Stranger Things Happen

Kelly Link is an American author of short stories born in 1969. Her stories might be described as slipstream or magic realism: sometimes a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and realism. Kelly Link moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, from Miami. She attended Greensboro Day School where she graduated in 1987. She grew up next door to her aunt and uncle, Sam and Babs Jones, and her two favorite cousins, Bryan and Laurie Jones. Kelly Link has two younger siblings, Holly Link of San Francisco, California, and Ben Link of New York, New York. Link is a graduate of Columbia University in New York and the MFA program of UNC Greensboro. In 1995 she attended the Clarion East Writing Workshop. Link and husband Gavin Grant manage Small Beer Press, based in Northampton, Massachusetts. They also co-edit St. Martin's Press's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology series, along with Ellen Datlow. (The couple inherited the "fantasy" side from Terri Windling in 2004.) Link was also the slush reader for Sci Fiction, edited by Datlow. Link taught at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina, with the Visiting Writers Series for the spring semester of 2006. She also has taught or visited at a number of schools and workshops including Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Brookdale Community College, Brookdale, NJ; the Imagination Workshop at Cleveland State University; New England Institute of Art & Communications, Brookline, MA; Clarion East at Michigan State University; and Clarion West in Seattle, WA. She has also participated in The Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. Link currently teaches a course on Short Story Writing to undergraduates at Smith College, near their home in Northampton, Massachusetts.