About Katherine Kirkpatrick
I grew up in Stony Brook, New York, and am the youngest of three children. My mother instilled in us a love of reading. Perhaps that’s why my brother, my sister, and I all have careers in the fields of writing and book publishing. My sister works for the National Geographic Society and my brother is a best-selling author of biographies and true-crime mysteries.
In the 6th grade, a teacher praised me for a story I’d composed about vampire bats attacking a scientist. After that, I decided I wanted to be a writer. Throughout my school years, I contributed stories and articles to school publications.
In high school, at the Stony Brook School, I enjoyed both art and writing. A science teacher gave me independent learning credits for illustrating a newsletter about the natural history of Long Island. I learned quite a lot about birds and other subjects and was also thrilled to see my drawings in print.
Though I don’t aspire to be a professional illustrator, I occasionally contribute illustrations to my books. Escape Across the Wide Sea features ten of my pen-and-ink sketches.
While a student at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, I worked at a women’s history archive located within the college library. Ever since then, sleuthing through history archives has remained one of my favorite pastimes.
After college, I lived in the New York City area for twelve years. There I held editorial and subsidiary rights positions in book publishing at E. P. Dutton, Henry Holt, Macmillan, and Scholastic. As a freelancer, I wrote articles and entries for encyclopedias, reference works, and National Geographic World Magazine.
During my time in New York, I was lucky to know the author Madeleine L’Engle. Madeleine encouraged me to write fiction. Through her writing workshops, I also met many of my closest friends. Several of us formed a writing group, which became an integral part of my life for nearly a decade.
I didn’t think I could ever come up with a plot for a novel. A plot came to me through my own experiences of living on City Island in a historic, nautical community. My friends helped me shape my writing into a book, Keeping the Good Light, which was published by Delacorte in 1995. I decided I liked writing young adult historical fiction and followed up with several more titles in that genre.
After marrying in 1999, I moved to Seattle, Washington. Soon after that, I became the very busy mother of twins. I still made time for my writing, and completed the two novels already in progress. But in the next few years, before my children entered kindergarten, I decided to mainly focus on shorter, nonfiction projects.
Both nonfiction and fiction writing allow me the pleasure of researching topics I enjoy. I like the straightforwardness of nonfiction. Usually when I start a nonfiction project, such as a biography, I have the sense of where it might be going in terms of the beginning, the middle, and the end. I don’t have to worry about a plot.
At the same time, writing The Snow Baby turned out to be just as much work as creating a novel. I needed to assimilate a vast amount of information about Arctic exploration. Focusing this material into the publisher’s desired 48-page format proved to be a huge challenge. And the photo research and clearing of permissions took months and months.
Currently I’m working on a number of different projects, both fiction and nonfiction. The response time from publishers is sometimes long. So during the waiting period, I brainstorm new ideas. If I’m offered a contract for a new book, I put aside the other projects so I can meet a deadline.
Aside from reading and writing, some of my other interests include astronomy, archaeology, history, natural history, bird watching, swimming, sailing, kayaking, nature and the environment, meditation and world religions.
Fancy, my gray tabby cat, keeps me company while I work. All freelance writers should have pets.
Time allowing, I enjoy visiting schools and meeting students. Since I’ve had my children, though, I’ve cut back my schedule from thirty schools a year to only one or two. Ask me to your school or library, anyway. I just might come.
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