Catherine writes both long and short personal essays, a number of which have aired on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Wisconsin Life” series (see the Audio & Video tab to listen to those). Compared to poetry, creative nonfiction gives her a chance to expand and range around in a subject. She enjoys essays that use a non-linear structure—braided or looping or segmented forms appeal to her.

​Her essay “Things That Matter” won the 2015-2016 So To Speak Nonfiction award, while “A Ring of Bells” won a Pushcart Prize and a Council for Wisconsin Writers non-fiction award in 2015. It appears in The Pushcart Prize XL: Best of the Small Presses, 2016 edition. Her piece “The Ambassador and the Assassin”, published by Under the Sun (2018) was awarded a Notable Essay citation in the 2019 Best American Essays.

Some of the creative nonfiction writers she admires include Annie Dillard, Alison Townsend, Anne Fadiman, Scott Russell Sanders, Teju Cole, Philip Lopate, Maggie Nelson, Rebecca Solnit, Pico Ayer, Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin, Richard Mabey, Adam Gopnik, Andre Aciman, Lauret Savoy, James Wood, Kathleen Dean Moore, Susan Hand Shetterly, Alison Hawthorne Deming and Margaret Renkel.

Under the Sun, May 2023

Here Be Monsters

Hawai’i Pacific Review, Oct 2022

The Chocolate Wars
Entropy, June 2021

Finding the Springs
Water Stone Review, vol. 24 (2021-2022)

Voracious

Fourth Genre, vol. 23.2 (Fall 2021)

Losing North
Under the Sun (May 29, 2021)

On the Van Galder Bus
Belt Magazine (Oct 15, 2020)

Homecoming Stew
Under the Gum Tree, issue 35 (Spring 2020)

Manhandled
The Coachella Review (Winter 2019)
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Fossils
Memoir Magazine

Black Walnut
Flyway (July 2018) 

The Ambassador and the Assassin 
Under The Sun, issue 6 (May 2018)

Vanishing Acts 
TriQuarterly, issue 149 (Winter/Spring 2016)

Things That Matter
So To Speak, 2015-2016 Contest Issue

A Ring of Bells
The Gettysburg Review, Summer 2014

Moving
Chautauqua, issue 11 (2014)

Kitchen Table c. 1970
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies
Vol. 36, Number 1, 2015.

Language Lessons
American Athenaeum, Summer 2013

Cycling Home
Apeiron Review, May 2013

Eight Belles
The Commons, May 1 2013

Wisconsin Food 
Wisconsin Trails, May/June 2012
Wisconsin Pubic Radio March 14, 2012

Selfishness 
Ninth Letter, Fall/Winter 2005

Learning to Ski Skate
Silent Sports, December 1998