Ronald Kelly
American writer
Ronald Kelly (born November 20, 1959) is best known as a speculative fiction and "southern-fried" horror writer. His tales are usually set in the Southern United States and feature language and actions that are associated with those regions.
Biography
Ronald Kelly was born November 20, 1959, in Nashville, Tennessee to Robert Kelly, a blue-collar tool & die worker, and Katherine Earline (Spicer) Kelly, a housewife. He grew up in Nashville, Tennessee until age six, then his family moved to the small rural town of Pegram, Tennessee in 1966. He attended Pegram Elementary School in Pegram, Tennessee and Cheatham County Central High School in Ashland City, Tennessee before starting his writing career. He currently lives in the rural farming community of Brush Creek, Tennessee with his wife, children, and a Jack Russel terrier named Toby.
Ronald Kelly originally had aspirations of becoming a comic book artist and spent most of his high school years writing and drawing his own comic books featuring his own superheroes and characters. He also collaborated with classmate Lowell Cunningham, who later became the creator of the Men In Black comic book series, which spawned several major motion pictures. Kelly began writing fiction during his junior year in high school, concentrating on horror, suspense, and male adventure. Between 1977 and 1985, he wrote several novels in the adventure and western genres that were never published.
The public source identifies “Ronald Kelly” as american writer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ronald, Kelly and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7365013. VIAF identifies the subject as 228604752. The Library of Congress control number is n2016000773. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1966, 1977 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ronald Kelly” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.