Writer of facts and fiction

I write novels and stories inspired by sets of facts and bodies of knowledge. I'm a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and my writing appears in Iron Horse, Stone Canoe, Sport Literate, and elsewhere. Find my review of Best Microfiction 2021 at Trampset. I'm at work on a novel composed of short stories, all connected by water.

As a writer for Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences, I report on faculty research in a wide range of subjects. Recent favorites include articles on: colliding black holes, new poems, extreme astronomy, and sniffing out new friends.

Send me a thought, a link, or a poem. I love to connect with people in the writing community. And fellow runners and theater geeks, too.

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Recent Blog Posts

What I didn’t expect from a place I’ve never been: Action in “Mendocino Fire”

By Kate Blackwood | March 6, 2021

The way she tells it, it’s happening before you know it’s happening, much the same way the character is plunged into the sea or down a steep drop or into the vortex of an irrevocable relational tangle. The prose is swift and unexpectedly physical.

Book Review: Mother Land by Leah Franqui

By Kate Blackwood | February 28, 2021

Two women, one kitchen; much tension. It’s a classic recipe for a good story, one that turns out beautifully in “Mother Land,” a novel by Leah Franqui.

Novel beginnings and beginning novels with Dana Spiotta

By Kate Blackwood | February 27, 2021

Those first words set the tone, voice, place, language, and objective of the novel. Like the set of instructions that comes with a game, they teach the reader how to “play the game” of this world.

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