A three-time Nobel Prize Nominee, Kathy Kelly has been to many parts of the world helping organize and participating in nonviolent direct action teams in places like Haiti, Bosnia, Iraq and the Occupied West Bank. She is a founder of Voices in the Wilderness (now Voices for Creative Nonviolence), a campaign to nonviolently challenge the UN/US sanctions against the people of Iraq. For bringing medicine and toys to Iraq, she and other campaign members were fined and threatened with prison.
She has served a nine-month sentence in Lexington, Kentucky maximum security prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites and a three-month sentence at Pekin federal prison for crossing the line in a peaceful demonstration at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Kelly holds a B.A. from Loyola University at Chicago, a Masters degree from Chicago Theological Seminary, and Honorary Doctorates from Lewis University and Chicago Theological Seminary. She has taught in Chicago area community colleges and high schools since 1974, and is active in the Catholic Worker Movement. Her publications include two books: Other Lands Have Dreams: From Baghdad to Pekin Prison (Counterpunch Press, 2005), and War and Peace in the Gulf (Cornerstone Press, 2001).
She also has contributed numerous articles, essays and interviews to various magazines and book collections. Among the many honors she has received are awards from Pax Christi USA, Newberry Library, Call to Action and Global Exchange International.
Maryse and Ramzy Mikhail Memorial Lecture 