Jude Southerland Kessler
Author, The John Lennon Series

Jude Southerland Kessler was born in Alexandria, Louisiana. In 1971, she attended Northwestern State University, finishing two degrees (in English and history) in three years. She won a graduate assistantship to The University of Maryland in 1974 and received her master’s degree in English in 1976. Since then, Kessler has taught English on the junior high, high school, and college levels. She was an English instructor at The University of Maryland and at Troy State University in Alabama.
In 1986, Jude began researching and compiling The John Lennon Series, a 9-volume factual narrative biography on the life of John Lennon. She collected an extensive Lennon library of over 500 books, numerous interview CDs and DVDs, stacks of periodicals, and interview tapes. In 1993, she took the first of seven trips to Liverpool, England to interview John Lennon’s childhood friends, early band members, art college mates, family members, and business associates.
In November, 2007, Kessler published the first narrative history in The John Lennon Series, the result of twenty years of research into Lennon’s life. Entitled Shoulda Been There, it is a scholarly work, including an Encyclopedia of Real Characters, a Scouse (Liverpudlian) Glossary, and extensive annotations for each chapter. This narrative history reads like a story, although it is a researched, fact-faithful, and footnoted work.
The second volume in The John Lennon Series, Shivering Inside, was released in 2010. This book details John’s life from 1961 (when The Beatles acquired a manager and left Liverpool) to mid-April 1963 when the band rose to British fame and stood on the brink of “The British Invasion” of America. Then, in 2014, Kessler released She Loves You, Vol. 3 in the series, chronicling the mad, mad era of 1963 – early 1964 when The Beatles topped the charts, played the Royal Command performance, and did three show-stopping performances on The Ed Sullivan Show. In 2018, Kessler published her fourth volume, Should Have Known Better (1964) in which John Lennon wrote and published his first book, In His Own Write, The Beatles made the movie, “A Hard Day’s Night,” and the band embarked on a World Tour, an extensive North American Tour, and a U.K. Tour as well. They also released two LPs that year: A Hard Day’s Night and Beatles for Sale.
Kessler’s most recent work is Shades of Life, Part One, (Volume 5), published in 2021. It traces John’s life and the lives of his mates in 1965, a year in which The Beatles repeated every single thing they had done in 1964. They made the film, “Help”; they went on a European tour and a North American tour, and John published his second volume of poetry and prose, A Spaniard in the Works. In 1965, John began to struggle with staid, married life in the stockbroker belt of Weybridge, Surrey. Unfortunately, as Lennon walked through the “shades” of 1965, Kessler proffers that no one heard him or offered rescue.
Currently, Kessler is researching and writing her sixth book, Some Forever (Shades of Life, Part 2), which chronicles the second half of 1965 and the first 8 months of 1966, concluding when The Beatles performed their final live concert at Candlestick Park, San Francisco. Most recently published in The John Lennon Series is the audiobook of Vol. 3, She Loves You, which features the superb narration of Scott R. McKinley. McKinley, an accomplished voice actor, studied and accurately replicated the voices of The Beatles, their manager Brian Epstein, their families and friends, and business associates – over 180 famous voices in all. This unique presentation of Kessler’s third volume is 33 hours in length, including two hour-long narrated “preludes” that offer condensed versions of Volume 1 and Volume 2 in The John Lennon Series, preparing the listener to join The Beatles for 1963 and early 1964.
Over the last 36 years, Kessler has emerged as America’s foremost Lennon expert. After her years in Liverpool doing research, she devoted herself to interviewing “Beatle people” living in the U.S. and Canada, including John Lennon’s close friend, May Pang, George Harrison’s sister, Louise, Paul McCartney’s sister, Ruth, and journalists who toured with The Beatles, including Ivor Davis, Art Schreiber, and Larry Kane.
Kessler writes for numerous Beatles publications. She is a Contributing Editor to Beatlefan magazine, the largest Beatles publication worldwide, and she writes frequently for Octopus’ Garden, the longest-running Beatles publication in America. For the last 10 years, she has served as the official blogger for the Fest for Beatles Fans, and she is a monthly contributor to Culture Sonar magazine. She has also been featured in Beatles Magazine, and for five years was a staff contributor for Louisiana’s 318Central.com.
Over the last ten years, Kessler has been featured in several books on Beatles authors including Beatlemania Lives On by Dana Klosner, and A Women’s History of The Beatles by Christine Feldman-Barrett. She has co-authored two books: The Beatles in Context and New Perspectives on The Beatles: Things We Said Today. Kessler has been asked to write the Foreword for numerous Beatles books including NEMS and The Business of Selling Beatles Merchandise in the U.S. 1964-1966 by Terry Crain, From Strawberry Fields to Abbey Road: A Billy Shears Story by Bob Wilson and Don Jeffries, Recipe Records, the 60s Edition by Lanea Stagg, and All Roads Lead to Lennon by Philip Kirkland.
For seven years, Kessler served as the Chairperson for The Authors and Artists Symposium for the Arkansas “Beatles At The Ridge” festival. In 2017, she chaired the GRAMMY Museum of Mississippi Beatles Symposium. Kessler was a keynote speaker at the 2014 Penn State Altoona “Beatles International Conference” and the University of Pennsylvania “Tomorrow Never Knows” conference in Philadelphia. She was a featured Guest Author and speaker at Charlotte, North Carolina’s 2023 Fab Fest and was one of the featured presenters at the Monmouth University’s White Album Conference, 2018. Kessler has routinely been a Guest Author/Speaker at The Fest for Beatles Fans in New Jersey, New York City, Chicago, and Las Vegas. She also served as Guest Author for BeatlesFestWest in San Francisco and BEATexpo in Stanford, CT. In 2008, she was selected “Featured Author” for the Melrose Arts Festival in Louisiana and keynote speaker for the Philadelphia “Women’s Night of Commerce.”
Currently touring the United States and offering Zoom presentations, she speaks to civic groups, libraries, book clubs, and social organizations. Kessler co-hosts the podcast, “She Said She Said,” with Lanea Stagg, author of The Recipe Records Series, and she and her husband Rande host a bi-monthly webinar called “John Lennon Focal Points.” Kessler is a regular guest on Martin Kelner’s BBC radio show, on ABC Australia’s “Up All Night” with Rod Quinn, and on Matt Williamson’s popular podcast, “Pop Goes the Sixties.” Kessler has also been a guest on George Noory’s “Coast to Coast” on PBR, on Radio Merseyside, Liverpool, and on long-running Beatle radio broadcasts such as Beatles Brunch with Joe Johnson, Breakfast with The Beatles with Cha-Chi Loprete, and Breakfast with The Beatles with Dennis Mitchell.
Kessler spends her spare time watching LSU football, tutoring her grandsons, reading, and dreaming of going to Ireland with her husband, Rande. She lives in Monroe, LA with her husband and her “supermodel” cat, Mia.