About
Hey There - I’m Kelsey.
I’m a lover of words with a keen eye for detail, which makes me a skilled and passionate writer and editor. I’m a woman of faith, a wife to Blake, and a mom to Lucy, Wesley, and Cate. We live in small-town Alabama with our dog, Wiley, on a few acres (no cows yet, but my husband tells me they’re coming).
As a publicist, I spent much of my time writing and rewriting media pitches to hone in on the perfect angle for the best contact at the targeted outlet, drafting press materials for corporate announcements, product launches, and stadium events, and my favorite of all—writing and editing articles and opinion-editorials for authors, leaders, bloggers, and CEOs. But as the job requires, publicity also demanded much of my time be spent in areas I wasn’t quite as passionate about: facilitating interviews, building itineraries and media lists, reporting, and all the back and forth that clutters a publicist’s inbox.
During the summer of 2018, I felt the pull to focus full-time on what I love best, what I truly believe is my gift and my calling: writing. It’s taken me a little bit to get here, but I’m excited to (finally) fully focus my professional energy on this new endeavor of Polished Writing Co.
My Career
I graduated from Auburn University with a bachelor’s degree in public relations, with a concentration in marketing, in May 2010. The next week, I moved to Atlanta and started working for The DeMoss Group, what was then the nation’s largest public relations firm serving faith-based organizations. While serving as an account executive at DeMoss, I had the opportunity to learn under some of the best minds in both public relations and evangelical Christianity. While Auburn’s journalism curriculum (a requirement for public relations majors) prepared me to land the job, the high standard of excellence at DeMoss refined my writing skills and honed my eye for detail.
After three years at DeMoss, I joined a former colleague at ICON Media Group, a full-service marketing firm serving a variety of clients in the faith and family space. As a junior partner and publicity director, I led publicity campaigns for publishing clients—launching multiple New York Times bestsellers—and contributed to campaigns for non-profit and film clients as well. The resident grammar nerd and punctuation police, I also served as the firm’s lead writer and editor. I spent five and half years at ICON working with some of the best publicists and marketers in the industry and am so thankful for all I learned about business, writing and relationships from my colleagues and clients there.
Which brings me to Polished Writing Co.! If I heard this once throughout my time in PR, I heard it a thousand times: everything communicates. From a logo to photos to website copy, everything communicates something about you and/or your brand. The typos on a homepage or misuse of their/there/they’re on social media posts are honest mistakes, but having an editor take a peek at planned content before pushing “publish” can help you put your best foot forward. Which is where I come in! I’m here to help you and your words look the best they can—whether that’s polishing your blog copy and catching misspelled words on your website, or drafting your press materials and web copy from scratch. I have a knack for making words work and I’d welcome the opportunity to help them work for you.
My words have been published in The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, HuffPost, POPSUGAR, FoxNews.com, and TODAY Parenting, to name a few. I’ve written for New York Times bestselling authors, corporate and nonprofit presidents and CEOs, reality television personalities, child psychologists, megachurch pastors and more. I’ve worked with a myriad of publishing houses and imprints, including HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, and Baker Books, among others.