Kathy Lynn Harris grew up amidst the hot, mesquite-covered flatlands of South Texas in a rural town just southeast of San Antonio. Along with the legend that is All Things Texas, her hometown of Gonzales had a story of its own as the “birthplace of Texas Independence.”

Kathy, along with her two sisters, attended Gonzales Public Schools, where her father taught eighth-grade science for more than 30 years. Her mother operated for many years a retail music business that soon became legend itself. Kathy’s family has long-owned hundreds of acres of ranchland, where they raise specialty beef for her mother’s world-famous chicken-fried steak.

Kathy wrote her first “book” of poetry on her dad’s typewriter when she was nine years old. Newspaper columns, essays and short stories soon followed. By age 17, Kathy had won several state writing awards, and her work was selected for an assortment of local and statewide publications.

After graduating valedictorian from Gonzales High School in 1987 and receiving a full scholarship from the Houston-based Terry Foundation, Kathy attended Texas A&M University in College Station, graduating in 1991. She majored in journalism and graduated magna cum laude. In the late 90s, she was a student in the creative writing graduate program at Texas A&M.

Kathy established her career as an editor and public relations practitioner with The Texas A&M System. As director of communications in 1999, she became the youngest person to serve on the Chancellor’s Executive Management Team at age 30.

In 2001, Kathy made her move to the Colorado Rockies to focus on her fiction writing. By day, she works for a relationship marketing agency as a senior writer. By night, she lives in a log cabin near the southernmost glacier in North America, at 10,500 ft above sea level with her husband, son and a collie named George Bailey.

Kathy has completed two novels and has published magazine articles, poetry, short fiction and essays.

I've come to realize that what connected my parents and grandparents to the hundreds of acres of ranchland my family owns is perhaps the same thing that connects me to these mountains. The land is alive under our feet; it is our foundation. The land will always, simply, be.

So when I need to feel in touch with not only my own small parcel of land—but also my heritage—I brave the elements, chop wood, stick my hands in the soil. Because I know that some thousand miles to the south, my family is doing the same.

KLH