Background
Keller was born and raised in West Virginia.
journalist novelist university professor
Keller was born and raised in West Virginia.
She graduated from Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and earned a doctoral degree in English Literature from Ohio State University.
The jury called it a "gripping, meticulously reconstructed account of a deadly 10-second tornado". Her master"s thesis was an analysis of the Henry Roth novel, Call lieutenant Sleep. Her doctoral dissertation explored multiple biographies of Virginia Woolf (A poetics of literary biography: The creation of "Virginia Woolf", Ohio State, 1996).
She has taught at Princeton University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Chicago.
She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University 1998–1999, and has served four times as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes. Her reviews and commentary air on National Public Radio and on The Newshour (Public Broadcasting Service).
Books Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It (Viking, 2008) � details the cultural impact of the Gatling gun Back Home (Egmont, 2009),named by Booklist as one of the top ten YA debut novels of the yearBell Elkins mysteries A Killing in the Hills (Minotaur, 2012). Received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus, and Booklist. Winner of the Barry Award for Best First Mystery Bitter River (Minotaur, 2013) Summer of the Dead (Minotaur, 2014) Last Ragged Breath (Minotaur, 2015) = 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).