Catherine has been teaching high school English for eight years, first in rural Montana and now in central Massachusetts. For her, writing is compulsive, but never destructive; it’s the safest medium by which she confronts what scares her. Catherine holds an ALM in Extension Studies, Creative Writing and Literature from Harvard University.
Awards & Publications
Essays
“Readers don’t have to love you. Do you love you?” - named Vocal Top Story (February 2024)
“This Heaven We Have, Here” - awarded first place in the Vocal #200 Challenge (January 2024)
Fiction
“An Answer from the Sky” - named Vocal Top Story (January 2024)
“Finding a Name” - named Vocal Top Story and awarded first place in the Vocal Past Life Challenge (July 2023)
On Teaching
“Audience Awareness: Shaping Student Writing Beyond the Classroom” with Erin Lebacqz - Teach Better (October 2023)
“Feeling bitter? Write it. Then, rewrite it.” - Teach Better (August 2023).
“Repeat Offender” with Brian Miller (January 2023)
Academic Publications
“Linking Local Communities to Critical Rural English Pedagogies” with Robert Petrone, Allison Wynhoff Olsen, and Elizabeth Reierson - Teaching English in Rural Communities: Toward a Critical Rural English Pedagogy, Rowman & Littlefield (2021)
“Reputation and Rurality: Using a Montana-Authored Text to Talk About Agency and Language in the Secondary English Classroom” - Montana English Journal, Vol.41 (2019)
“Combining Postcolonial, Feminist Lenses to Teach Agency” - MATELA Update (2017)
I find that Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter compel my mind to consume and produce reductive content over valuable, complex questions and stories.
For every supposed benefit these platforms offer, they dilute my capacity for exploration, inquiry, and true contemplation — the very virtues that I pursue when writing.
If you’d like to get in touch, find me here instead.
Keep in touch.