Kelsey J. Harris is an author, speaker, and survivor who has lived to tell the tale. She now tells it boldly in some of the places she’s been called to serve – prisons, churches, shelters and more. Born and raised in Las Vegas, Kelsey’s early life was marked by addiction within the family, loneliness and isolation. Those struggles eventually evolved into her own addiction to drugs, incarceration, and homelessness. But her story didn’t end there.

After years in darkness, she found freedom through faith, healing, and radical honesty. Clean for more than fifteen years, Kelsey has rebuilt her life from the ground up and discovered a calling far greater than the mere survival she was used to.

Today, she uses her voice to reach others who feel stuck, lost, or ashamed of their past. Her memoir, Touching Fire, is a raw and redemptive account of her journey through trauma and hardship and into the pursuit of helping others find hope that anyone can make it out of a life that seems hopeless.

Through writing, public speaking, and her workshop series The Girl on Fire – created in collaboration with her teammate Teresa Nickell, author of The Girl in Your Wallet – Kelsey invites others to reclaim their stories. Whether that means writing them down, speaking them out loud, or simply choosing to live differently. She encourages others to step out of their comfort zones to offer a helping hand to someone else and to never give up on a loved one who seems lost.

She believes that no story is too messy to be redeemed and that healing happens when we stop hiding and start telling the truth.