Katrina Kittle
Biography
Katrina Kittle
Katrina Kittle
BIO
Katrina Kittle has lived in the Dayton, Ohio, area for most of her
life. She grew up in a home where books were prized possessions,
and original stories and poems were given as gifts. Her father is a
voracious "chain reader," who encouraged her to read widely, and
still greets her at the door with, "Did you bring me any books?"
Her childhood was full of horses and books and hiking in the woods
and camping with Girl Scouts and bossing the neighborhood kids into
huge theatrical productions.
Originally interested in dance and theater, Kittle studied at the
North Carolina School of the Arts and Ohio University, first as a
theater major, then accepting an invitation to join the Honors
Tutorial Program in English. She had a double major in English and
education, worked in the theater costume shop, rode on the
university’s equestrian team, kept a Theater minor, and
graduated in 1990 with a BA in English and a BS in Education,
earning the honor of Outstanding Graduating Senior for both
departments.
After graduating, Kittle taught high school Advanced Placement
British Literature for five years, then spent several years
freelancing as a children’s theater director and creative
writing instructor. She has worked as a writer-in-residence and
taught creative writing workshops for several elementary, middle,
and high schools, universities, and organizations. She has taught
students as young as third grade and has had an 80-year-old student
in her Fiction Intensive at The Antioch Writers’
Workshop.
During "the freelance years," Kittle also worked in case management
support at the AIDS Foundation Miami Valley (now the AIDS Resource
Center), cleaned houses (which she found "very Zen-like and perfect
for the writing life: you get left alone with your hands busy doing
mindless work while your brain can simmer story ideas"), and worked
as a veterinary assistant.
Kittle then taught 6th- and 7th-grade English at the Miami Valley
School in Dayton, where she directed a middle school play each
year. If she were to remain teaching, she would wish to be nowhere
else, but she is so grateful to be fulfilling a lifelong dream to
write full-time.
She is the author of Traveling Light and Two Truths
and a Lie. Her third novel, The Kindness of
Strangers, was released in February 2006. Early chapters from
this third novel earned Katrina grants from the Ohio Arts Council
and from the Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District. The
Kindness of Strangers was selected as a Book Sense pick for
February, and was the Fiction Book winner for the 2006 Great Lakes
Book Awards.
Kittle runs and studies Latin dance. She's also on a cooking spree
(when she's "cooking" figuratively on a new book, she's usually
cooking a lot literally, too). In addition to her favorite pesto,
she's especially fond of a recent espresso-chocolate cake she
discovered in Nigella Lawson's fabulous cookbook Feast.
She is also dabbling in Indian cooking, and so far her friends are
willing guinea pigs.
With her purchase of a house in June 2009, Kittle has become
obsessed with gardening. She tilled garden beds and planted
seedlings before she unpacked a single box inside the
house. With the gardening came new cooking challenges --- how to
preserve the harvest? She is determined to learn to can before next
fall's garden bounty.
Kittle loves theater and tries to get her theater "fix" at least
once a year, usually auditioning for something at the Dayton
Theatre Guild.
She also loves to travel. Recent travel highlights include spending
the night with a goat under her bed in Ghana; riding horseback
through the hills of Sintra, Portugal; and floating on her back in
the Mediterranean looking up at the cliff-cut city of Positano,
Italy.
Katrina Kittle keeps Dayton, Ohio, as her home base, where she is
the proud aunt of Amy and Nathan, and where she lives with her
assistant, Joey the cat.
Katrina Kittle
