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About Hunter Kelly

Hunter Kelly is a leading journalist and broadcaster focused on music and LGBTQ+ issues. His articles have been published by Rolling Stone, Spin, Billboard, and Apple News. From 2006 to 2015, he served as the Nashville correspondent for ABC News and ABC News Radio, interviewing everyone from Taylor Swift and Katy Perry to Garth Brooks, Merle Haggard, and Loretta Lynn. His original reporting was featured on ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and ABCNews.com.

From 2020 to 2022, Hunter hosted and curated an interview series with New York City’s 92nd Street Y featuring in-depth conversations with Wynonna, Brandi Carlile, Brandy Clark, Willie Nelson, Yola, and more. From 2020 to 2024, he hosted and programmed Apple Music’s Proud Radio, an hour-long show featuring LGBTQ+ artists in country and Americana music. The Judds, Dolly Parton, Maren Morris, Indigo Girls, Orville Peck, Jason Isbell, Reba McEntire, Brandi Carlile, Allison Russell, Brandy Clark, and Brothers Osborne’s TJ Osborne were all featured as guests on Proud Radio.

Hunter has established himself as an expert on The Judds with the eight-hour Apple Music series on their music, Neon Songbook: The Judds, released in 2022. Upon Naomi Judd’s passing, his remembrance of her influence on his life was published in Rolling Stone and became the magazine’s 12th most-read article of 2022.

As a media figure, Hunter has either given interviews to or had his work featured in Variety, The New Yorker, NPR, Pollstar, People, Billboard, Out, The Advocate, The Washington Post, and The Tennessean. He was also quoted extensively in Marissa R. Moss’s seminal 2022 book Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be.