just the facts

Picture
Photo by Dawn Shields

Name: Kate Klise
Occupation: writer
Birthday: April 13
Place: Peoria, Illinois
Current residence: a 40-acre farm
in the Missouri Ozarks
Education: Marquette University
Favorite color: robin egg blue
Favorite song: “Wichita Lineman"
by Jimmy Webb
Favorite book du jour: Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
Favorite artists: my sister, M. Sarah Klise, and Pierre Bonnard 
Favorite things to do: read, write, laugh, travel, get lost in unfamiliar places 

What has Kate written?

1. Award-winning children’s books (Click here to read more about those)
2. Loads of articles for People magazine about crime, music, celebrities, everyday heroes, and famous villains
3. A newspaper column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which I wrote weekly and weakly until I was fired (Best thing that ever happened to me!*)
4. Boring press releases for the federal government (Also a good thing because it gave me time to think about other things)
5. Transcripts for a PBS affiliate in New Orleans (No original thinking required, but it taught me how to type really, really fast)
6. Thousands of letters to family and friends, which is probably why I write a lot of my books in an epistolary format

 *As wise woman Lori Benton once told me, you’re nobody if you’ve never been fired. It was only after I got fired from my job as a newspaper columnist that I got serious about doing what I really wanted to do, which was to write books. So remember that if you ever get fired. 

full disclosure

Picture
Drawing by a young artist named Leo in Texas
 

In the interest of full disclosure, here's a more accurate picture of what I really look like.