When she was ten years old, Katherine’s dad took her to her first poetry reading, where she read a poem about a pine tree and another poem about a bully at school. She has been writing ever since, and she still enjoys giving poetry readings.
Katherine studied English at Macalester College, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
At Macalester, she worked as a writing assistant in a first-year English course and received an Academy of American Poets College Prize for her creative work. Subsequently, Katherine attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a teaching fellow and received the John C. Schupes Fellowship for her thesis. As a teaching fellow at The University of Iowa, Katherine taught literature and creative writing to undergraduate students. She has also worked at 826 Valencia, a youth writing center in San Francisco, where she helped teach reading and creative writing to students age 5-18, and tutored ESL students. She currently teaches writing and literature at York College in Queens.
In addition to her scholarly and teaching experience, Katherine has worked in publishing and is the editor of her own press. Katherine’s own poetry, criticism and articles have been published in various literary journals and magazines in the U.S. and abroad, and she has held writing fellowships in Lithuania and Ithaca. When she’s not editing, teaching or writing, Katherine loves biking, traveling, eating exotic foods, and swimming in the ocean.