Hiya, friends. I’m Katie. I am an writer and a married mom of four awesome kids. We are a homeschooling family with lots of pets living in Indianapolis, Indiana. I’m a mountain-loving girl living in the heart of a midwestern city. I love to hike and I enjoy hiking nature preserves and parks in Indiana, but my favorite place to hike is anywhere on the Appalachian Trail.
I’ve been a writer since I was little. My first two books were Going over Home and Going over Jordan, two young adult historical fiction novels, whose main characters are sisters. My third book was a children’s picture book based on the memoir of my great-great-great-grandmother, entitled When Mother Read Aloud: The Life Story of Almyra King Holsclaw. The title comes from the name of a poem her daughter wrote about her. Her memoir read like a children’s book, so I just had to make it into one. The book was illustrated by five local high school students.
Today I am writing more young adult fiction, including (working title) Angel Windows, The Grave on Tanager Drive, and one I affectionately call Maggie (for now). I am also working on a middle grade novel-in-verse based on Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley’s poem, Little Orphant Annie.
My undergraduate degree is in Elementary Education and I have been an educator for years. For a long time I worked in Special Education, and for three years I worked from home as an online ESL teacher, teaching English to students in China. I’ve taken that educator energy and combined it with my love of writing, and now occasionally run Creative Writing clubs for young people on Outschool.
Today I am a student at Vermont College of Fine Arts in the Writing for Children & Young Adults MFA program. I am also a student at The Institute of Children’s Literature. Through working with mentors who are also authors, I am in the process of rediscovering the joy of writing.
I would love to hear from you. You can contact me here. And don’t forget to subscribe for updates, news, and stories, too!