About Margot
Before embarking on a writing life, Margot Anne Kelley spent a long career in academia, where she taught literature, writing, photography, and art and literary theory at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Her books include A Gardener at the End of the World, which won the Maine Nonfiction Award in 2025 and was a co-winner of the John N. Cole Award for Maine Nonfiction, and Foodtopia: Communities in Pursuit of Peace, Love, & Homegrown Food, which was a finalist for the Maine Nonfiction Award in 2023, a Civil Eats Book Pick for 2022, and winner in The Readable Feast’s Socially Conscious Category in 2022. The Meadow (with Barbara Bosworth), was shortlisted for Paris Photo/Aperture’s Photobook of the year and was selected as one of Time Magazine’s Best Photobooks of 2016. Earlier books, in which Kelley combined photography and writing, include A Field Guide to Other People’s Trees and Local Treasures: Geocaching Across America. Her essays have appeared in publications including Fourth Genre, Terrain.org, Blue Lyra Review, Fourth River, The Catch, and others.
Until 2016, Kelley was very active as a visual artist. Her projects have appeared in galleries throughout the United States, among them AXIOM Gallery (MA), the Berman Museum of Art (PA), the Center for Creative Photography (AZ), Copley Society of Art (MA), Sam Lee Gallery (CA), and the SOIL Cooperative Art Gallery (WA). From 2016 to 2019, she was the Editor in Chief of the literary journal The Maine Review.
In 2017, she and her husband, Rob, co-founded the Saint George Community Development Corporation (StGCDC), a non-profit that works to ensure residents of their town have what they need to live well. Along with running a food pantry, clothes closet, wood bank, and other essential services, the StGCDC hosts community-wide events like an annual Thanksgiving dinner and an appreciation celebration of the many folks who volunteer their time and talent at the StGCDC.
Kelley lives in Maine.
Programs & Projects I’m Interested In
American Farmland Trust launched the conservation agriculture movement and has been bringing agriculture and the environment together since 1980. We take a holistic approach to farmland and ranchland, protecting it from development, promoting environmentally sound farming practices, and keeping farmers on it. Agriculture offers the most promising solutions in our fight against climate change—but only when we support farming can it fulfill its promise to feed us and heal our planet.
We shift power and change policy to equitably resource our new generation of working farmers. We envision a just future where farming is free of racial violence, accessible to communities, oriented towards environmental well-being, and concerned with health over profit.
Maine Farmland Trust is a statewide organization that protects farmland, supports farmers, and advances the future of farming. Our goal is to protect Maine farmland and to revitalize Maine’s rural landscape by keeping agricultural lands working and helping farmers and communities thrive.
MWPA brings together Maine writers, editors, publishers, and literary professionals to sharpen their craft, create community, celebrate great writing, and lift the state’s literary culture.
The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA), formed in 1971, is the oldest and largest state organic organization in the country. MOFGA is a broad-based community that educates about and advocates for organic agriculture, illuminating its interdependence with a healthy environment, local food production, and thriving communities.