PAM KELLEY

Pam Kelley started her career at a wonderful afternoon newspaper, the Charlotte News, where she covered murders, many zoning hearings, and, on one memorable night, a wreck that spilled chicken necks all over Trade Street. She reported for more than 30 years at the Charlotte Observer on wide-ranging subjects, including higher education, books, and family issues. She co-authored an investigation of group homes for mentally ill children that prompted the governor to order statewide inspections. And she spent a year writing stories about a fifth-grade teacher and his students in one of Charlotte's highest-poverty schools. She first met Money Rock in 1986, when she was covering a cocaine-related shootout in Piedmont Courts, the public housing project pictured on the book's cover.

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Her awards include honors from the National Press Club, National Education Writers Association and the Society for Features Journalism. She contributed to a subprime mortgage exposé that was a 2008 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

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Pam grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, then headed south to UNC Chapel Hill, where she earned a BA in journalism. She has an MFA in nonfiction from Goucher College. She lives with her husband, Trent Foley, in Cornelius, North Carolina. They have two grown children.