Copywriter. Producer. Filmmaker. Fundraiser. And now—because why the hell not?—author.

After receiving an Advertising degree from The University of Texas at Austin, Ramona Kelly was the first woman to be hired as a writer/producer at GSD&M Advertising in Austin. She soon transitioned to the freelance world, where she stayed for too many years to count. With the new millennium came a new career: documentary filmmaking, a medium that finally scratched her storytelling itch.

She served as co-executive producer of Last Best Hope, (available free on YouTube) an independently produced World War II saga broadcast on primetime PBS, and associate producer of When I Rise, (available on Amazon Prime) an Independent Lens civil rights film she spearheaded for UT. Kelly also served as consulting producer for documentary films Honky Tonk Heaven, For the Sake of the Song, and the currently in-production Let Them Play.

Next came a fulfilling new career as Senior Director of Development (a fancy word for fundraiser) at The Wittliff Collections, Bill and Sally Wittliff’s acclaimed literary, film, and photo archive at Texas State University. Here she seized the reins of a little project known as the Lonesome Dove Reunion. Kelly herded forty-three members of the beloved 1989 TV miniseries’ cast and crew, including Bill Wittliff, Suzanne DePasse, Simon Wincer, Robert Duvall, Diane Lane, Danny Glover, Ricky Schroder, Chris Cooper, and Barry Tubb, for a week-long 2016 celebration in Fort Worth that will never be forgotten. As Robert “Augustus McCrae” Duvall said in his keynote, “It’s been quite a party.”

What Comes Next is Kelly’s first book. She lives in Austin, Texas.