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.

Hawai’i Pacific Review, Oct 2022

The Chocolate Wars
Entropy, June 2021

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

Voracious