Kelly Ramsey was born in Frankfort, Kentucky. She studied poetry writing at the University of Virginia and earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh. She co-

founded The Lighthouse Works, an artists’ residency program on Fishers Island, New York, and later moved to Northern California, where she worked for the U.S. Forest Service as a trail maintenance worker, wilderness ranger, and wildland firefighter on a hotshot crew. Her writing has appeared in the
Washington Post,
Sierra,
Electric Literature,
Catapult, the
San Francisco Chronicle, and the anthology Letter to a Stranger. She loves creeks, lakes, coffee, the ocean, punishing hikes, diner breakfasts, getting too much sun, and plants—even if their care remains a mystery. She lives in Redding, California, with her partner, their daughter, and their dog, a lab mix who won’t swim named Rookie.
Ramsey's new book is
Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West.
At Electric Lit she tagged seven books
about ladies who work hard in mysterious, misunderstood industries. They suffer and struggle and can’t find anywhere to pee. Sometimes they’re victimized. And yet, in each of these stories, the women grow stronger than they ever imagined. Their books are about finding strength, resilience, joy, belonging, and so much more in the grittiest, most “masculine” workplaces.
One title on the list:
Thick Skin: Field Notes from a Sister in the Brotherhood by Hilary Peach
I have to admit straightaway that, before reading Thick Skin, I didn’t know exactly what a boilermaker was, but I knew it sounded tough as hell. A boilermaker
is a construction welder, which, as Peach’s book humbly demonstrates, is an entirely badass and rather terrifying job (picture being lowered in a basket with a crane to weld a plate onto the side of a massive cruise ship). In this memoir of episodic stories, Peach tracks her many assignments and the progression of her skills as a welder in Canada—where she was based—and on assignment in the U.S. While misogyny is rampant in the male-dominated field of boilermaking, Peach’s approach is even-handed: she shows villains who tell her to “go home” alongside lovable mentors, allowing her male colleagues to be as human as herself. Peach, also a poet, writes beautifully (and humorously too!). I love this one and it deserves more attention than it has thus far received.
Read about
the other books on Ramsey's list at Electric lit.
--Marshal Zeringue