katherin edwards

The Office

edwardskatherin@yahoo.ca

Thanks for visiting my website. I call Kamloops, B.C. home and write daily from a studio in the garden known as the paperback shack.

Biography

Katherin Edwards grew up on a working cattle ranch outside of Kamloops, B.C. where she experienced the ideal childhood. She rode horses, played with blue heeler puppies and tried in vain to climb into her brother's tree house. When she was thirteen she hauled a Royal typewriter, a small desk, and a table lamp into her bedroom closet, closed the door and wrote her first short story for an English class. She called it, The Horse. After graduating high school, Katherin ran away to join the Calgary/ Edmonton thoroughbred racing circuit where she worked as a groom and gallop girl for seven years, first with Simon Purdy, then Mary McDonald. In 1981, after reading numerous Dick Francis mystery novels, she ventured to Newmarket, England and worked for racehorse trainer Ron Boss, at LaGrange Racing stable. When she turned 27 she returned to school to study horticulture with the intent of working as a head gardener at an English country estate. But as the saying goes, "Man plans while God laughs," and with his sense of humour, her life took a multitude of turns. She has worked as a floral designer, maid, gardener, groundskeeper and is currently employed as a home health care worker. Along the way she stopped off to earn a BFA in creative writing at the University of Victoria. She credits her instructors Steve Price, Carla Funk and Lorna Crozier as her inspiration for poetry, and Joan Weir, Bill Gaston, John Gould and Sean Virgo for her interest in fiction. In 2008 she settled back in Kamloops and enrolled in the MFA writing program through UBC. There she worked with Susan Musgrave, Wayne Grady and Gail Anderson-Dargatz. She graduated in May of 2013 . Her thesis work, under the guidance of Gail Anderson-Dargatz, was a novel about racehorses and life. There are days she still dreams about her brother's tree house.

Awards/ Publications

Awards and Recognition (Selected) ·

2017: Recipient of The Malahat Review’s Far Horizon Award for Fiction http://www.malahatreview.ca/contests/far_horizons_fiction/2017_winner.html
2016: CBC Short Story Prize Longlist
2015: Winner of the Okanagan Short Fiction Contest ·
2014: Winner of the Eden Mills Literary Contest
2014: Honorable Mention, Word on the Lake Readers' & Writers' Fest Contest
2012: 2nd Place, The Malahat Review’s UVIC 50th Anniversary Prize in Creative Nonfiction
2012: 3rd Place, The Malahat Review’s UVIC 50th Anniversary Prize in Poetry ·
2012: Winner of the inaugural Ajax Poetry Contest

Publications (Selected) Books

2018 : A Thin Band (book of poems) Radiant Press
2015: The Sky Was 1950 Blue (Poems), JackPine Press (Chapbook)
2013: At the Edge (Collaborative Novel), Unlimited Editions, Chapter “Judy Judy Judy”

National and International Literary Journals (Selected)

2023: The Canadian Journal of Theology, Mental Health and Disability: Spring 2023 Blue Star
2017: The Malahat Review: Winter Issue No.201, Far Horizon's short story winner
2014: Arc Poetry Magazine: Summer Issue No. 74, one poem
2013: The New Quarterly: Winter Issue No. 125, three poems
2012: The Malahat Review: Spring Issue No. 178, three poems

Anthologies (Selected)

2016: In This Together: Fifteen True Stories of Real Reconciliation, Brindle and Glass, one essay
2015: A Rewording Life, A Rewording Life, Sheryl Gordon, one word
2015: Moonshine, Two Of Cups Press, one poem
2014: Word on the Lake Writing Contest Anthology, one poem

Kind words about my poetry book "A Thin Band"

"Reading these poems, after the recent death of my husband, grace, and thankfulness, come to mind. Katherin Edwards knows the grief of it. A button dangling from a cuff, blue skies that weep like an elephant, pearly everlasting— these poems are a gentle, timely reminder: sow our oats and let our gods run wild.” Susan Musgrave, author of Origami Dove

"It's so unusual to find wit and sorrow inextricably linked in a book of elegies. A Thin Band assumes that kindness will be shrewd, that empathy will be a summons to the imagination, and that irony will be an opening not a closure. The revelation of this wideawake, plain-speaking collection is that there is metaphor everywhere and in everything – sometimes to be played with, sometimes to be stared into, wondering" Sean Virgo

"These poems, like a kaleidoscope, set the world of loss aglow and illuminate the tilt of memory as it tumbles back through years, picks up the pieces, and holds them up as proof of beauty within the fracture of elegy. Unflinching and resolute, yet tender and raw, this collection sings even the names of common weeds into song, and leans hard into the light at sorrow’s edge."Carla Funk

"Katherin Edwards' A Thin Band is a heartbreaker. The clarity in her lines, the startling leaps in her language, the moral complexity in the imagery itself are nothing short of gorgeous. Though deeply engaged with loss and grief, this is nevertheless a poetry about life: how to live in the world, and to go on living, as fully and richly as we can." Steven Price