Kelly Lundquist

Kelly Lundquist (she/hers) has been teaching at North Hennepin since 2014. Originally from the Mississippi Delta, Kelly taught literature and writing across the United States (Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and California, among other places) before settling in Minnesota. She is a nonfiction writer and is finishing a book-length memoir, Beard. She hopes it will be available in bookstores near you by 2024 (fingers crossed). Her writing has appeared in many places, including Image Journal, Good Letters, Patheos, and The Academy Stories. In 2012, she was awarded a year-long first book fellowship as the Milton Postgraduate Fellow at Seattle Pacific University. In 2005 and 2006, Kelly taught conversational English in Slovakia and was selected for a 2011 Teaching Exchange in Carnoustie, Scotland, and Kigali, Rwanda. While she remains a PhD dropout (because life happens and if you take one of her classes, she’ll probably tell you all about it), she has an MA in English with an emphasis in 17^th century British Poetry and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction with an emphasis in fragmented lyric form and tragicomedy. At NHCC, she’s been selected for an Above and Beyond award as well as a Faculty of Excellence Award from TRIO. Kelly has received multiple grants from the Central Minnesota Arts Board and regularly sits on grant panels for them as well as for the Minnesota State Arts Board. In Fall 2022, Kelly will be the new Director of Creative Writing at NHCC. She will also be co-facilitating S.E.E.D. and will be serving as President-Elect for our faculty union. Her recent sabbatical project was focused on decolonizing the teaching of Academic English. When she’s not teaching or writing, Kelly is probably either making food or reading about food or streaming a show about food on her television. It goes without saying that she’s probably also eating food while doing these things, most likely while listening to Broadway showtunes. She lives with her spouse and daughter in Monticello, where she leads weekly Tuesday Night Writers Open Studios at the Monticello Arts Initiative.