Shortly after her own battle with breast cancer, she launched CircusOfCancer.org, a how-to web site for friends and family of women with the disease. The website includes a photo album of her own struggle against breast cancer and writings in such categories as “Finding a Lump” and “Losing My Hair.” Below is an excerpt from “Getting the Diagnosis”:

At 1pm, Emily Birenbaum called and said these exact words, "Kelly, I understand that you called in this morning. I have the biopsy report and Kelly, it's cancer." I called out: "Edward!" and he came to me and we crowded around the phone, politely asking the simplest of questions. "Is the test always correct?" "Does it say how much cancer there is?" "Could it be a false positive?" After a very short conversation where we learned the phrase 'invasive ductal carcinoma', we hung up. The girls were at our knees, needing to be fed and put down for a nap. There was so much to do, on so many fronts, that the only thing to do was to start doing.

Kelly is a newspaper columnist, with her columns appearing in print, online and notably in the January 2009 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. Her first book, The Middle Place, is a memoir about her Irish-American father’s battle with cancer and her own triumph over the disease. It was published on January 8, 2008 (hardcover, ISBN 1-4013-0336-6) and December 23, 2008 (paperback, ISBN 1-4013-4093-8). At its peak, the hardcover reached number 16 on the Hardcover Non-fiction New York Times bestseller list. The paperback has reached number 2 on the Trade Paperback Non-fiction New York Times bestseller list to date.

Kelly is also the author of an essay about "women's remarkable capacity to support each other, to laugh together, and to endure" which her publisher ( Hyperion/ Voice) videotaped Kelly reading and posted on Youtube. The video has received over 4 million views on YouTube to date.