Scout, aka Kelsey Goldman, is a twenty-something native of Louisville, Kentucky still trying to figure out how to be an adult. In the summer of 2012, after four years of college in Baltimore, she moved to New York City and into a 560-square foot, fifth floor walk up on Avenue C with two (sometimes three) other girls. After moving out to Brooklyn, earning her masters, and working a myriad of unpaid internships and barely paid jobs, she’s still trying to figure out if New York is the right place for her.

Museum worker by day, craft beer slinger by night, Kelsey’s Southern roots are more backwoods than belle. Her mother’s family are McCoys (yes, those McCoys), while her father is Chicago-born but Louisville-raised, making her the product of two contradicting heritages: the hills of eastern Kentucky and the (relatively) big city of Louisville. She grew up spending holidays in the Appalachian towns of Pineville and Middlesboro, combined with summers in Maynardville, Tennessee and Brevard, North Carolina (less beach, more lake: very Redneck Yacht Club), further entangling her roots in the South.

So it’s fitting, starting this blog about dueling cultural identities: To most of her family, Kelsey is the city girl because she grew up in Louisville, but in New York, Louisville feels like a small town. She wanted to start Zelda & Scout because the South is home, but that doesn’t make her apartment in Brooklyn any less so — even if it is temporary.

“You gotta live somewhere, but you also get to live somewhere.” —John Green