Kelsey McKinney

Kelsey McKinney (born 1992 (age 31)) is an American journalist, podcaster, and author. She is a staff writer at Defector and the host of Normal Gossip. She previously wrote for Deadspin and Vox.

Early life and education
McKinney grew up in Flower Mound, Texas. Her father is an Evangelical pastor.

She attended the University of Texas at Austin, earning a bachelor's degree in 2014. While in college, she interned at Reader's Digest and the Harry Ransom Center and began writing freelance stories. She served as an editor for The Daily Texan.

Career
McKinney previously wrote a newsletter, Written Out, about books written by women who had been marginalized in historical narratives.

McKinney was hired at Deadspin in spring 2019. That October, she was one of 19 staffers at the publication who resigned in protest after editor Barry Petchesky was fired over a mandate to "stick to sports." Over the following year, she and her former colleagues discussed the idea of a media company that more effectively centered writers. They proceeded to found the sports and culture site Defector, which is owned collectively as a worker cooperative.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she felt nostalgic for the experience of gossiping with friends in person and tweeted about the idea of hosting a gossip-centric podcast, which would become Normal Gossip. She began working on the first season of the show with producer Alex Sujong Laughlin in September 2021, and it premiered five months later to critical and popular acclaim.

Books
McKinney's 2021 debut novel, God Spare the Girls, follows two daughters of a Texas megachurch pastor who is revealed to have had an affair. Her first essay collection, You Didn’t Hear This From Me, is scheduled for a February 2025 release by Grand Central Publishing.

Personal life
McKinney lives in the Queen Village neighborhood of Philadelphia with her husband and her dog, Georgia. She was raised Evangelical, but no longer considers herself a believer in Christianity.