Katharine Kerr
photo copyright by Patty Perett.
(Used with friendly permission from Katharine Kerr)
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Katharine Kerr was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1944 to a family which considered itself British-in-exile far more than
American. Since she was taught to read on British books alone, these sentiments resulted in her inability to spell properly in
either system, British or American, though fortunately there were no other lasting effects.
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Just to compound the culture shock, the family moved to Santa Barbara, California, when Katharine was a schoolgirl. Already
an avid baseball fan, her first reaction to the move was horror at discovering that the state had no major league teams, as the
Giants and the Dodgers had yet to arrive. Her second reaction was an even greater horror upon realizing that in Southern
California beaches are far more important than books. She vowed to leave as soon as possible, carrying out the threat in 1962,
when she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Since then, she has left it only to visit relatives in the British Isles and currently
lives in San Francisco itself.
After dropping out of Stanford University in the mid-Sixties to join several of the revolutions then in progress, Katharine
worked at a number of low-paying jobs, including a stint in the Post Office, while she read extensively in the fields of classical
archaeology and literature, Medieval and Dark Ages history, and modern fiction. (She can muddle along in Latin and several
modern languages, including the speech of rock-and-roll musicians.) She lived with a number of cats and of course, attended
baseball games. Eventually she had the good fortune to meet up with an old friend from secondary school, Howard Kerr, who
loves cats, books, and baseball as much as she does. They were married in 1973.
In 1979 a friend gave Katharine what became known as "the fatal gift," her first fantasy role-playing game. She became so
intrigued with both gaming and the fantasy field as a whole that she began writing articles for gaming magazines, and for some
time was a contributing editor to DRAGON magazine as well as contributing to gaming modules for both TSR, Inc, and
Chaosium, Inc. Now, however, she is devoting herself exclusively to fiction, for the simple reasons that there are only
twenty-four hours in a day, and she does require the normal amount of sleep.
Books:
Snare
The Deverry chronicles:
Daggerspell
Darkspell
The Bristling Wood
The Dragon Revenant
A Time of Exile
A Time of Omens
Days of Blood and Fire
Days of Air and Darkness
The Red Wyvern
The Black Raven
The Fire Dragon
Read about what Katharine Kerr has to say about the Deverry dweomer and Deverry.
Read a chapter from THE BLACK RAVEN on Katharine's site.
Author's Homepage:
www.sff.net/people/kathkerr/
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