Catherine Young

Catherine Young is a writer and performing artist whose work is infused with a keen sense of place. She is author of the poetry collection Geosmin (scent of soil) released in 2022 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her memoir Black Diamonds: A Childhood Colored By Coal is forthcoming in 2023 from Torrey House Press. Catherine's writing has been published in the anthologies The Driftless Reader, Contours, Permanent Vacation II: Eighteen Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks, Imagination and Place: Cartography and is forthcoming in Essential Voices: A Covid Anthology. Her work appears internationally in Reliquiae and The Island Review and in Ascent, Minding Nature, Flyway, Fourth River, About Place, Hippocampus, Literary Mama, Midwest Review, Kestrel, and Wisconsin Review, among others. Her poetry has been published as broadsides for Fermentation Fest Farm Art / Dtour Passwords and Madison Metro Buslines and most recently in Stillpoint Arts Quarterly, About Place, Tiny Seed, Cold Mountain Review, Passager, and River Heron. Her children's fiction, nonfiction, and poetry appeared in Cricket. 

A nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays, Catherine Young is the recipient of a Terry Foundation Edenfred Fellowship and a residency at Write On Door County. She worked as a national park ranger, farmer, educator, and mother before completing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. She holds degrees in Environmental Science, Physical Geography, and Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She worked for International Crane Foundation in prairie restoration and woodland ecology, as naturalist for Aldo Leopold Head Nature Center and naturalist-writer for Wisconsin State Parks. Catherine is poetry editor of Midwest Review, leads writing workshops, and records the weekly Landward podcast for WDRT community radio.

Rooted in farm life, Catherine lives with her family in Wisconsin's Driftless bioregion where she is totally in love with meandering streams.

More at: www.catherineyoungwriter.com/