Katherine Marsh

Katherine Marsh grew up in a New York City suburb that was 29 minutes by train to Grand Central Terminal. An only child of divorced parents, she spent a lot of time reading, trading stories with her grandmother who had run a bar in New York, and talking--with her best middle school friend--to Truman Capote and other dead New Yorkers on a Ouija Board. In seventh grade, her mother convinced her to start taking Latin. An embarrassing translation error ended her Latin career three years later but the time she spent with magisters Ellis and Philips instilled in her a lifelong love of etymology and hatred of grammar.

After surviving high school, Katherine went to Yale where she studied English literature. Upon graduation, however, she discovered that openings for poets were scarce and took a job teaching ninth and twelfth grade English at not just any Connecticut boarding school but her alma mater. Having finally had enough of high school, in 1998, she left for New York City.

There, while living in a two-bedroom apartment in Soho with four people and a pinball machine, she began her career as a journalist. Her first job was at Good Housekeeping where she kept the messiest desk in the history of the magazine. She spent two years writing for Rolling Stone though not about music (so please don’t send her your garage band demo tapes) but about kids and their lives across the country. She also began writing about New York people and places for the City Section of The New York Times.

One day in 2000, she went on a blind date with a New York Times reporter who a few years later shed his affiliation and lured her away to Washington, D.C. After many stages of grief, Katherine has come to realize that she can live happily in a city that is not New York. After working as an editor at the Washington City Paper and as managing editor of The New Republic magazine, Katherine finally took the plunge and became a full-time kid's writer/ observer of a kid (her son Alek). She lives with her husband, Julian, Alek, and their two cats, Egg and Scotty in Chevy Chase, D.C. (R.I.P. Amuse Bouche--Scotty's former fish.) But if you live in New York and keep your eyes peeled you may occasionally spot her back at one of her old haunts.

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