Julia Keller is an American writer and former

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

. Her awards include the

Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing The Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing is one of the fourteen American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Journalism. It has been awarded since 1979 for a distinguished example of feature writing giving prime consideration to high liter ...

Life

Keller was born in

Huntington, West Virginia Huntington is a city in Cabell and Wayne counties in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is the county seat of Cabell County, and the largest city in the Huntington–Ashland metropolitan area, sometimes referred to as the Tri-State Area. A h ...

and lived there throughout her early life. Her father was a mathematics professor who taught at Marshall University. She graduated from

Marshall University Marshall University is a public research university in Huntington, West Virginia. It was founded in 1837 and is named after John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States. The university is currently composed of nine colleges: L ...

, and earned a doctoral degree in English literature from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

. Her master's thesis was an analysis of the Henry Roth novel, ''Call It Sleep''. Her doctoral dissertation explored multiple biographies of

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

(''A poetics of

literary biography When studying literature, biography and its relationship to literature is often a subject of literary criticism, and is treated in several different forms. Two scholarly approaches use biography or biographical approaches to the past as a tool for i ...

: The creation of "Virginia Woolf"'', Ohio State, 1996). She currently lives in both

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and rural

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

Career

Keller was a

Nieman Fellow The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University awards multiple types of fellowships. Nieman Fellowships for journalists A Nieman Fellowship is an award given to journalists by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

from the period of 1998 to 1999. She has taught at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...

, and the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. She also has served four times as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes. Her reviews and commentary air on

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

and on ''The Newshour'' (

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

). Keller began her career as a journalist as an intern for columnist Jack Anderson. She went on to work for over 25 years as a reporter for many major newspapers, including the

Columbus Dispatch ''The Columbus Dispatch'' is a daily newspaper based in Columbus, Ohio. Its first issue was published on July 1, 1871, and it has been the only mainstream daily newspaper in the city since ''The Columbus Citizen-Journal'' ceased publication in 1 ...

, The Daily Independent, and the

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

. She joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune in late 1998. She was formerly employed as a cultural critic for the Chicago Tribune, but left her job in 2012 to write full-time. Keller won the annual

for her three-part narrative account of the deadly Utica, Illinois tornado outbreak, published by the ''

'' in April 2004. The jury called it a "gripping, meticulously reconstructed account of a deadly 10-second tornado". The ''Tribune'' has won many Pulitzers but Keller's prize was its first win for feature writing. In 2008, Keller wrote a nonfiction book that detailed the cultural impact of the

Gatling gun The Gatling gun is a rapid-firing multiple-barrel firearm invented in 1861 by Richard Jordan Gatling. It is an early machine gun and a forerunner of the modern electric motor-driven rotary cannon. The Gatling gun's operation centered on a cyc ...

. In 2012, she started publishing a series of mysteries, ''The Bell Elkins Mysteries'', that details a woman's return to Appalachia and the mysteries that abound in her home town. The first book in the series. starred reviews from Publishers Weekly,

Library Journal ''Library Journal'' is an American trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey. It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional prac ...

, Kirkus, and Booklist. It was also a winner of the Barry Award for Best First Mystery.

Books

* ''Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It'' (Viking, 2008) * ''Back Home'' (Egmont, 2009), named by Booklist as one of the top ten YA debut novels of the year

Bell Elkins mysteries

# ''A Killing in the Hills'' (Minotaur, 2012); # ''Bitter River'' (Minotaur, 2013) # ''Summer of the Dead'' (Minotaur, 2014) # ''Last Ragged Breath'' (Minotaur, 2015) # ''Sorrow Road'' (Minotaur, 2016) # ''Fast Falls the Night'' (Minotaur, 2017) # ''Bone on Bone'' (Minotaur, 2018) # ''The Cold Way Home'' (Minotaur, 2019)

Bell Elkins e-novellas

* ''The Devil's Stepdaughter'' (Minotaur, 2014) * ''A Haunting of the Bones'' (Minotaur, 2014) * ''Ghost Roll'' (Minotaur, 2015) * ''Evening Street'' (Minotaur, 2015)

The Dark Intercept

# ''The Dark Intercept'' (Tor Teen, 2017) # ''Dark Mind Rising'' (Tor Teen, 2018) #''Dark Star Calling'' (Tor Teen, 2019)

References

External links

* * * https://www.npr.org/2014/06/26/325050397/in-mystery-series-w-va-river-town-theres-no-escape-from-terror
Biography from Chicago Women in PublishingWriters Talk Interview
*
The story behind Bitter River - Online Essay by Julia Keller
at Upcoming4.me {{DEFAULTSORT:Keller, Julia Living people 21st-century American novelists American mystery writers Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing winners Chicago Tribune people Marshall University alumni Ohio State University alumni Writers from Huntington, West Virginia Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) American women journalists Women mystery writers American women novelists 21st-century American women writers Novelists from West Virginia 21st-century American non-fiction writers Barry Award winners