KATHY T. KALE OFFICIAL WEBSITE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I have been writing in one form or another almost all my life. I grew up wanting to be a writer and wrote my first novel at nineteen. I enrolled in university as an English major but transferred to science after my roommate said it was easier because I wouldn’t have to write essays. Four years later I had a degree in biology.
I moved to Texas – because it was warm – and after living in a snow belt, I’d had enough of winter. I started a Ph.D. in Toxicology, studying the mechanism of action of dioxin. It was fascinating research, but my favorite part of grad school was going to class and writing papers. I graduated in 1987 and started a Post Doc in Infectious Immunology. Here my favorite part was writing research proposals.
During this time I got married and after my husband took a job at the State Department, we moved to Washington D.C., where we lived for two years. Then two days after the onset of the first Gulf War we left for Africa with a one month stop in The Netherlands. Living in Nairobi, Kenya, I began to write full time. Besides fiction, I worked as a science writer and editor. I enrolled in the Humber College Creative Writing Mentor program and later attended the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop. We intended to go overseas for two years and ended up staying eleven.
In 1998, the American Embassy in Nairobi was bombed and there was an outbreak of the plague in India. These two events were the inspiration behind Black Death in a New Age. It was published in hardback in 2003 and in paperback in 2004. That year it placed second in the Royal Palm Literary Award in the Mystery category.
We moved back to the U.S. in 2002. I became interested in screen writing and studied at the nearby Indian River State College. After the 2008 economic crash, as I saw homes around me being foreclosed and people I knew losing their jobs and investments, I wondered, what happened. How did the country end up in such a sorry state? The answer surprised me, and was the inspiration behind Gold Street.
Two years later there came the great debate in America over health care. As a Canadian, I followed the news to see if there would be universal health care. I remember from 2003 that when the Medicare drug bill passed, Congress passed a law which prohibited the government from negotiating with drug companies for lower prices. This set off an interest in the drug industry, and once again what I learned was so disturbing, I felt compelled to write about it. That was the impetus of Harm.
Besides writing and reading, I really love:
Kathy T. Kale is a member of the Mystery Writers of America. Her first novel won a Royal Palm Literary Award in 2004. She has worked as a science editor and writer and lived in Africa for eleven years. She has a PhD in Toxicology and did postdoctoral research in Infectious Immunology. She studied creative writing at Humber College and the University of Iowa, and screen writing at Indian River State College.
That's the short version of my bio. Here is a longer (selective) version.
With my sister at the beach
hanging with the dogs
