2023 Petrichor Prize winner
I grew up on the remote iron mining range of Northern Minnesota, the granddaughter of Italian and Croatian immigrants and this has informed all my writing, from the rebellious poems of my twenties to the searching work I do now. Ore dust surrounds me, as do towering pines. I love words, write in my mind even when I am not writing on paper and am intensely interested in how words come alive.
After graduating from the University of Minnesota in English and theater, I taught school for some years until I found ways to write for hire. When people ask me, what have you written, I answer everything. Except editorials and cartoons. And though I still write poetry, I have found my most delight in storytelling. My debut novel, Do Not Find Me, was a 2017 finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and its companion, The Autobiography of Corrine Bernard: A Novel, was selected as a semifinalist for the Chautauqua Prize in 2019. A novel of small-town characters in mid-century America, Rare Birds, was released in 2017, and a historical novel Steel awarded the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award for best fiction title of 2022.
I live steps from the creek that flows to the Mississippi in Minneapolis and have been married for forty years to a man who quotes Shakespeare in every birthday or holiday card. Our adult daughter is off doing important scientific research for women’s health. And our old cat sleeps in the sun.
Regal House Publishing is proud to bring you Kathleen Novak’s novel Come Back, I Love You (A Ghost Story) in the fall of 2025.
