Kelly Cresap is an author, editor, storyteller, workshop leader, presentation coach, and former commentator for NPR. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia in 1998. As Director of First-Year Writing there, he assisted in leading a university-wide renovation of the writing program. Prior to joining the Professional Writing Program in August 2003, he wrote features for the Georgetown Law Review, and taught world drama, postmodernism, and rhetoric at the University of Tennessee.

Dr. Cresap is actively promoting a critical reassessment of the 1977 John Fowles novel Daniel Martin. His essay "The World-making Capacity of John Fowles's Daniel Martin" will appear in the June 2013 issue of Texas Studies in Literature and Language. His case for Fowles's novel as an "enhanced map of the human universe" may be found in numerous discussion threads at http://www.fowlesbooks.com/forum/index.php.

Dr. Cresap has lectured widely from his critical biography about the artist Andy Warhol, Pop Trickster Fool: Warhol Performs Naivete (U. Illinois Press, 2004). His writings have also appeared in the anthologies Blessed Bi Spirit and The Queer Sixties.

In 2005 Dr. Cresap coordinated the inaugural Smithsonian conference on storytelling for personal transformation. In 2007 he co-presented at the follow-up event, "Your Life's Story in Myth and Archetype."

After earning his B.A. in English at Whitman College, Dr. Cresap worked in Seattle during the mid-eighties as a freelance visual artist and film and theater critic, and then in Tokyo as a technical editor, journalist, and ESL instructor.

Dr. Cresap's years in Japan formed the basis of his first play, "The Laughing Muse," which received a 2009 playwriting award from the Maryland State Arts Council. As an award-winning performer, Dr. Cresap has been featured at venues such as the Ontological Theater and Dixon Place in Greenwich Village, the New Genre Festival in Tulsa, the Washington Storytellers Theater in DC, and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Since 1998 Dr. Cresap has been an activist with the men's-movement organization Mankind Project (mkp.org), dedicated to personal growth, leadership development, and empowering men to missions of service. He has helped staff over 30 weekend training intensives, for the local Greater Washington center, and for centers in Kentucky, Illinois, Arizona, Texas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas.

Dr. Cresap frequently consults and leads workshops on storytelling, humor, and public speaking. Recent presentations include the Pentagon, NASA-Goddard, and the National Speakers Association University. His website is www.laughingmuse.com.