Kelli grew up near Hartford, Wisconsin. “Population 1,547,” she says, “if you count cows as equal to people, which-if you live in Hartford, Wisconsin-you do.”

“When you live in Hartford, Wisconsin, and you’ve got five kids and almost as many alcoholic ex-husbands, what you need is a child that responds to farm machinery mishaps with a cheerful, ‘It’s okay mom, I’ve got another arm.'” Kelli explains. “But I emerged fully formed from the womb, a tender hearted genderqueer crunchy-granola child asking ‘Mom, can we buy organic produce? Can I be a vegetarian? Can we save the whales?'”

When she was ten, Kelli informed her relatives she would no longer be going by “Kelli Sue,” her given name. She explained to them they should refer to her as “Kelli Sam.” That really wasn’t a popular request.

Perhaps it was no coincidence, then that when later that year Kelli’s mother decided to move the family to Daytona Beach, Florida, she sent Kelli and her sister to a small, extremely conservative fundamentalist Christian school where the rulebook forbade-among other things-attendance at unwholesome movies, dancing, card-playing, and the wearing of flannel shirts by females. “Who do you think they were trying to weed out with that one?” Kelli asks. “Still,” Kelli says with a sly grin, “I had a good time. We had small classes, the teachers seemed to really care. And of course, there was softball.”

Kelli followed up her time at Warner Christian Academy by going to Mid American Bible College in Oklahoma City. She studied English (and of course, the Bible) and for a short time was even engaged. “Talk about your close calls,” Kelli says, “If someone wants me to tell ’em a scary story I always say ‘I was 2 months away from being a preacher’s wife in the Bible belt.'” [Read more about this close call on Kelli’s essay on the HuffPost Personal]]

When she was done with school (not finished, just done) Kelli moved to Haiti where she developed recreational activities at a school for kids with disabilities until the school closed temporarily due to political problems.

With time on her hands, Kelli began volunteering at the Home for the Dying a few blocks away from the school. This is where Kelli met-and fell in love with-the Missionaries of Charity. Hoping her crush would spend itself, Kelli volunteered with the Missionaries of Charity (or MCs as those on the inside track say) not only in Haiti, but also in Norristown, Pennsylvania and finally, Miami.

After four years, Kelli requested to become an MC and was told to report to their convent in the South Bronx for boot, uhh, um aspirancy, the first level of training.

Because she “had insufficient docility,” and “walked like [her] shoulders were angry” (all direct quotes from the nuns) Kelli was held back in aspirancy for 12 months, the convent equivalent of flunking preschool six times.

Kelli’s time as an MC and the story of the ultimate demise of her religious vocation are chronicled in her one-person show and included in her book of essays Freak of Nurture (Topside Press, 2013) [Read about Kelli’s adventures in too much self-esteem in this essay on Thought Catalog or watch this short film by Laura Hadden about Kelli’s convent misadventures, appropriately titled Sister Mercy. Why didn’t Kelli comb her hair for the current day part of filming? We have no idea.]

When Kelli left the convent she moved to Philadelphia where she went back to school (she received her RN in 1998), joined a softball team (of course) and began a joyful life as a 26-year-old baby dyke.

Since she was a kid, Kelli had always written funny stuff. She often would be late to do chores because on her walk home from the bus, she was stopping to tell the cows jokes. “They were a very very good audience” she explains.

Despite being a very…um..dramatic failure her convent experience still produced humor. “I scribbled something call a ‘a day in the life on a nun’ on the back of an envelope when I was in the convent,” Kelli remembers. “Someone passed it along to the regional superior and she photocopied it for the whole region. I made my sisters laugh; it was the ultimate pleasure!”

in 1998, Kelli began writing Trippin’ Out, her award-winning column for Philadelphia’s Au Courant. Every Friday she was supposed to write exactly 500 words that related to the theme of the paper that week. And was funny. And also gay. It was like comedy writing boot camp, and Kelli swears none of those columns survive in any form but we bet we could find some in her outgoing AOL mailbox! She also wrote her first two books in these years, How to Survive and Maybe Even Love Nursing School (American Nurses’ Association Book of the Year, 2005) and How to Survive And Maybe Even Love Your Life As A Nurse, both published by FA Davis.

In 2001, Kelli began performing comedy. Her first attempt at an open mic was at a hotel basement in Northeast Philadelphia. A fellow comic who didn’t like Kelli’s response to his rape “joke” chased her in the parking lot with a broken bottle. Kelli decided to perform everywhere BUT comedy clubs. So Kelli looked around Philly (and well, everyplace else) and anytime there was a stage open she asked “Can I please MC this event.” Sometimes there wasn’t even a stage.

One time in New York she performed standing on a stepladder.

In Philly, Kelli lived on a houseboat (her childhood dream) with her two cats and regularly kayaked to New Jersey before breakfast. [For more on Kelli’s life as a boat-liver listen to “My Ship Came In & Now I’m Living On It” from Kelli’s first CD]]

Kelli moved to Portland in 2005 to be with the woman she called “My Queen” burlesque superstar Heather MacAllister. Heather passed from ovarian cancer in Feb 2007 and Kelli moved back to the east coast, to New York There’s a lot that could be said about that time in Kelli’s life, but she sure did make some comedy! She had released her first CD I am NOT a 12 Year Old Boy just before leaving for Portland, and now in New York she recorded Almost Pretty at the historic Stonewall Inn. Kelli’s comedy was just as well, funny, as ever but now it had a certain kind of edge. One critic called it “stand up comedy where even slam poetry doesn’t dare tread.”

A few years later, Kelli fell in love with Cheryl B, a well-known figure on the performance poetry scene, playwright, literary events producer and all around lovely human. They enjoyed a few lovely years together, produced the Nerd Love series of anti-Valentine’s Day events, toured as part of the Famous Lesbian Comedy Road Show (Famous Lesbians Not Included) .

And then…can you guess what happened? Uh. Cheryl developed Hodgkin’s lymphoma and died as a complication of the treatment. Uh. Yeah. Kelli made a video about that year. It’s hilarious but not for the faint of heart.

Cheryl’s writing group, her friends and literary executor Sarah Schulman and Kelli worked together to compile Cheryl’s book My Awesome Place. It won the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Work. You can watch Kelli’s acceptance speech here. But you should probably buy My Awesome Place for a young person in your life trying to find their people.

In 2013, Kelli wrote Freak of Nurture a collection of essays which comic Bob Smith described as “…a funny and yet serious collection of autobiographical essays. Her passage from Catholic nun to an atheistic-none of the Gods above is a gripping journey.”

Kelli had the book release party at a funeral home.

Kelli has continued to tour and perform and has released two more comedy CDs and also works full time in the NYC public school system. She also produced NYC’s longest LGBT storytelling series, Queer Memoir. In 2022, Kelli shared the story of the last days of Heather Macallister at the Moth Mainstage in front of several thousand people at the McAllister Theater in Princeton NJ

. “Well that was a lot of sob-laughing” observed one of the producers.

Kelli’s latest–and hilarious–album NOT THE GYM TEACHER was released Feb 7th 2020.

Because of all of, yknow, this, Kelli has become a trauma informed comic who is a frequent funny speaker at conferences, workplaces and other places people are not usually laughing.

Kelli says “I believe laughing is a revolutionary gesture, and laughing together is perhaps the greatest revolutionary gesture of all.”