Kathryn's Bio

Kathryn grew up in Greenbelt, Maryland where she first learned to love planned communities. She is a novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and professor emerita of theatre. Her latest novel, WHEN EARTH SHALL BE NO MORE (co-written with Paul Awad), is the first in a SF trilogy.

Her documentary film with Paul Awad, BICENTENNIAL BONSAI: EMISSARIES OF PEACE, won the Utopian Vision Award (2021 Utopia Film Festival) and Best Documentary Short (2022 Arlington International Film Festival).

She is the co-writer/producer of the feature crime drama, A SAVAGE NATURE, released and distributed by Gravitas Ventures. The film won Best Feature Drama – French Independent Film Festival, Best Thriller – Washington Film Festival, Best Feature Film – New Cinema-Lisbon Monthly Film Festival, Grand Prize Thriller Award – Hollywood Screenplay Contest, and Best Actress (Joanna Whicker) – Los Angeles Crime and Horror Film Festival and screened at numerous festivals in 2020-2021. For more information about the film, visit http://savagenaturemovie.com/

Her debut novel, FOAL PLAY, won the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition. MURDER ON THE HOOF and NEIGHING WITH FIRE (Pacific Book Awards Finalist in Suspense, Library of Virginia Literary Award Nominee) are the second and third books in the Colleen McCabe series (St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur) set on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

Her short story, "Big Yellow Taxi," is published in the 2021 Anthony Award Best Anthology Nominee THE BEAT OF BLACK WINGS: CRIME FICTION INSPIRED BY THE SONGS OF JONI MITCHELL (Untreed Reads). Her short story, "He Done Her Wrong," featuring silver screen icon Mae West as an amateur sleuth, is published in CHARLAINE HARRIS PRESENTS MALICE DOMESTIC 12: MYSTERY MOST HISTORICAL (Wildside Press).

Her plays are published in THE BEST TEN-MINUTE PLAYS OF 2014 (Smith & Kraus, Inc.), THE BEST TEN-MINUTE PLAYS OF 2011 (Smith & Kraus, Inc.), and PLAYS OF THE DRAMATHON (The Theatre Lab).

She is the creator/writer/producer of the multi-award-winning and internationally viewed Western series, THURSTON, and recipient of the Mary Marlin Fisher Playwriting Award, an American Association of University Women Educational Foundation playwriting grant, a Shubert Fellowship, and a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Playwriting. She was twice named Faculty of the Year at Northern Virginia Community College, where she is now Professor Emerita of Theatre.

She has earned degrees in psychology from Boston College, Loyola University Maryland, and Hofstra University and an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, The Dramatists Guild, and other professional writing organizations. Kathryn lives in Reston, Virginia with her husband and frequent collaborator, Paul Awad, and their rescue cats, Maggie and Andy.