Bill Kelly has been a college English instructor, soccer coach, athletics and admissions liaison, athletics recruiter, and summer camp director over the past 25 years. A graduate of Macalester College, he majored in English and went on to earn his MA in English and Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota, where he won an Academy of American Poets prize. His poems have appeared in numerous poetry journals, and in 2015 his book of poems, Water Tiger, was published by David Robert Books. He has published children’s stories in Cricket magazine, Highlights for Children, Scouting magazine, and others. He is also a painter; his work has been shown and sold in Minneapolis, Albany, and Boston.
Bill’s college admissions assignment was for a “Character Sketch” which he produced in two parts: First, he drew a cartoon character he created, a little penguin named Maurice, shown sketching a giant self-portrait on a huge wall. The image filled the entire page. The second part of Bill’s Character Sketch, written on a separate page, described his love of storytelling. When he arrived for his college admission interview, he was stunned to see his cartoon pinned up on the Admissions office bulletin board. At the end of the interview, he learned he’d been accepted.
