Laura Kelly is a catalyst, an educator and a storyteller. She became smitten with the power of the written word when she was in third grade and won a poetry contest for her entry about the color green. She has worked as a newspaper reporter, radio talk show host, magazine editor, travel writer. She has taught journalism at a handful of American universities and worked for 10 years as the faculty director of the European Journalism Institute in Prague, Czech Republic. Laura lived in Eastern Europe for eight years, working with young journalists and media outlets in Armenia, Slovakia, Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria and further afield. Her book, Dispatches From the Republic of Otherness, is a collection of essays about her life there.

Home, she says, is wherever your heart can sleep. And awaken.

Many thanks to Raechel Running for the use of her photograph (above) of the ranch house at the Grand Canyon Trust's Kane Ranch on the Arizona Strip, where some of us have spent time writing.

See more of Raechel's work at raechelrunning.com.

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