About Me

 About me

I’ve been a reader since I was 5 years old and a writer since I was 11, when I made my first attempt at a novel (a pretty good opening chapter, then I ran out of steam).

I’ve made my living as a journalist, writing medical newsletters, magazine articles (travel, contemporary crafts), book reviews, and public health material (reports, speeches, policy papers). I just completed my first novel, a mystery.

After years living in Atlanta and the mountains of Western North Carolina, I’ve settled in a small community near Chapel Hill, NC, all the better to be able to spend time with three exceptional (of course) grandchildren and their families.

It’s possible that I read too much—is such a thing possible?—and I definitely haunt local independent book stores, which I refuse to believe are a dying breed.

I’m an omnivorous reader. Fiction, mainly, but some biography, memoirs, and travel writing. I confess to a degree of Anglophilia. Among my current favorite authors are Kate Atkinson, Jane Gardam, Hilary Mantel, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwen and Pat Barker.  In the mystery realm, I favor British police procedurals by authors like John Harvey, Peter Robinson, P.D. James (of course). Susan Hill, and Deborah Crombie (yes, I know she’s American, but her police investigators are Brits).

But I’m also a fan of many American writers, too, both contemporary and classic. Eudora Welty, first and foremost; John Casey, Josephine Humphreys, Wallace Stegner, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Scott Fitzgerald.

And the classic novels I read and re-read: Middlemarch, almost anything by Trollope, anything by Jane Austen. Short stories? I always go back to Peter Taylor, William Trevor, James Joyce (The Dead is perfect, yes?).

I could go on and on—and I will, in future blog posts, which will highlight what I’m reading and thinking about.

And I hope that people who read this blog will share news about books they love. Reading is a paradox: both a solitary affair, but also a way to stimulate conversation and create a virtual community.

At least, that’s my hope.

--Katie Baer