Katherine Ayres

Katherine Ayres has been a lover of books since earliest childhood, when she began inventing stories before she could write them.  Her childhood home state of Ohio is the setting for her first two novels, Family Tree and North by Night: A Story of the Underground Railroad.  Her present home, Pittsburgh, is the setting for her third novel, Voices at Whisper Bend.  As part of her research for this book, which takes place during World War II, she spent a day on a tugboat on Pittsburgh’s Monongahela River.  Ayres traveled farther afield for her fourth and fifth books.  Silver Dollar Girl begins in Pittsburgh, but quickly moves to the untamed terrain of the Colorado Rockies during the 1880s Silver Boom.  Under Copp’s Hill visits turn-of-the-century Boston’s North End and explores mysteries that lurk in a settlement house and pottery.  Stealing South returns to the 1850s in Ohio and Kentucky and is a companion book to North by Night.  Whether writing about contemporary characters or historical ones, Ayres enjoys the opportunity to travel and study the real places she includes in her books.

Cricket, Spider, Ladybug, and Pockets magazines are among the publishers of her short stories for children.  She also writes plays for both children and adults, several of which have received professional readings.

Ayres’ love of literature was a theme during her first career as a teacher and elementary school principal, and she continues to enjoy working with children and teachers in the school setting.  She teaches Writing at Chatham University, where she also coordinates the Masters of Arts in Children’s and Adolescent Writing.  She is a founding member of the Playwrights’ Lab at Pittsburgh Public Theatre.  She has been a speaker at the California Reading Meeting (for teachers of reading), at Aspen Summer Words (a writers’ festival), at the Ligonier Writers' Conference, Fall Festival of Children's Books and at numerous schools as a visiting author and writer-in-residence.

When she is not writing, she skis, golfs, gardens, and quilts.  She and her husband are parents to three adult children and grandparents to three, a girl and two boys.

BOOKS IN PRINT

Family Tree  Random House (1996)
North by Night: A Story of the Underground Railroad
Random House (1998)
Voices at Whisper Bend  Pleasant Company (1999)
Silver Dollar Girl  Random House (2000)
Under Copp’s Hill  Pleasant Company (2000)
Stealing South: A Story of the Underground Railroad
Random House (2001)
 A Long Way  Candlewick Press (2003)
Macaroni Boy  Random House (2003)
Matthew's Truck  Candlewick Press (2005)
*Up, Down and Around  Candlewick Press (2007) *