She did her undergraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, receiving a B.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures and History in 1989. She received the M.A. and Ph.D. from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UCLA in 1993 and 1998 respectively. Most recently, Kelly has been doing research in the area of children’s literature, and has taught two tutorials devoted to this topic (2007 and 2008).