Kuitenbrouwer, Kathryn (Ann Frances) 1965-

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KUITENBROUWER, Kathryn (Ann Frances) 1965-

PERSONAL: Surname is pronounced "Koo-ten-brouwer;" born February 6, 1965, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; daughter of Bryan Richard James (a civil engineer) and Beatrice Ann (a homemaker; maiden name, Hudson) Walsh; married Marc Kuitenbrouwer (a film work coordinator), March 15, 1991; children: Linden, Jonas, Christopher. Ethnicity: "Irish." Education: University of Ottawa, B.A.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Westwood Creative Artists, 94 Harbord St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1G6.

CAREER: Freelance writer and reviewer, 1995—.

MEMBER: Writers' Union of Canada.

WRITINGS:

Way Up (short fiction), Goose Lane Editions (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada), 2003.

The Nettle Spinner (novel), Goose Lane Editions (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Manual for Secret-Keeping, a novel set in Canada and the southern United States.

SIDELIGHTS: Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer told CA: "The putting together of words to express ideas has a certain frisson that appeals to me. I have been writing stories since I was able to write. I do not have a particular process except that I do not sit to work unless I have some aspects of the story worked out in my mind.

"I am influenced by the symmetry and joy in nature, by the visual arts, by humanity all around me. My work is influenced by early writers like Catherine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie. It is not, however, anything like their conservatism.

"I am inspired by memory and its falsity. Paradoxically, one could maintain that memory is all one has, yet in its inaccuracy, that amounts to nothing. I am interested in how profoundly meaningful that 'nothing' is to the individual. I am also fascinated with the development of space from wilderness to agriculture, the shift in humanity that has come with that development.

"I am keen to push boundaries in my writing, particularly the thin threshold between the body and its environment. This often leads down some gritty paths.

I write about women working: logging, planting trees, building houses. My characters are often blatantly sexual. Their body functions are entirely earthly so that no act rises to lyricism, but rather it bears the same mundane yet beautiful plateau of being as an animal or, microcosmically, a virus struggling to survive, a weed."