Radium and Roses brings to light the least-talked about public health crisis of the 21st century: Nasopharyngeal Radium Irradiation (NRI) and its fall out. 

Johns Hopkins physicians pioneered NRI in the early 1940s and, using the institution’s reputation and reach, proliferated the treatment across the globe. One study estimates that anywhere between 500,000-2 million people in the U.S. received an estimated 2000 rads to their sinus tissue—24 rads to the pituitary glands—5 rads to the brain—and 2 rads to the thyroid. 

Within this book are some of the many unheard stories of victim survivors of NRI; these stories indict contemporary institutions upholding the biased science that denies any health consequences of the radiation treatment. 

Radium and Roses details a complex diagnosis—a cancer in the very system that tells us how we know truths about science and history. Through personal and historical narratives of family, loss, survival, history, and science, Radium and Roses weaves many stories into one epic tale with a half-life of sixteen-hundred years.

Kelly is seeking an agent and publisher for this 50,000 word non-fiction book about a public health crisis and an intentional misrepresentation and cover up of health science.

“Hold Them and Wonder” is Kelly’s debut poetry chapbook forthcoming from Baltimore-based Akinoga Press in 2025.
Equal parts philosophical, joyful, and queer, she holds these poems close to her heart. She hopes you will, too

Thats not the title; but, you will have to sign up for email announcements so that you can be the first to buy tickets when it hits the stage.

In 2020 when the world experienced the unprecedented (for our lifetime) pandemic of the Covid-19 virus. The government shut down and we became more reliant on technology to connect than ever before. I created this short collection of poems from lines of poetry submitted in response to prompts posted to my Instagram story over a number of months.

My instagram followers and friends wrote short lines or verses in response to prompts I provided, and I worked with the “raw data” of their words to create poems that offered stunning, leaping, and sometimes haunting images. The poems were shared back onto Instagram stories to be viewed by those who contributed lines.

Developed and presented at the 2019 Innovation in Teaching and Learning Conference,

Four steps of the writing assignment lifecycle and how to support student writers across curriculums:
Planning, Prompting, Supporting, Assessing

2019 Conference Presentation Kelly Purtell and Tom Polk (tpolk2@gmu.edu)

Writing Across the Curriculum | George Mason University`