about
kathryn m. barber
Kate Barber is a fiction writer, teacher, editor, and scholar who grew up in the mountains that run along the state line of Tennessee and Virginia.
She earned her Master’s in literature from Mississippi State University and MFA in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her areas of expertise include fiction writing, Renaissance literature, Shakespeare, and publishing. An avid amateur historian in her spare time, she also studies British monarchies from Edward IV to James I, the War of the Roses, and Tudor England, with special focus on Henry VIII’s wives, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Raised a Baptist preacher’s daughter, Kate’s writing centers largely around small-town communities, music, southern families, and religion. She has taught composition, creative writing, and literature at UNC Wilmington, Mississippi State University, Belmont University, and Columbia State Community College.
Kate’s stories and essays have appeared in Grist, The Masters Review, The Pinch, Blue Earth Review, Moon City Review and elsewhere. Her short story “Sorry About Your Bird” was featured in the New Voices section of The Masters Review and was a finalist and honorable mention in the James Hurst Prize for Fiction (2019) judged by Stephanie Powell Watts. A lover of literary magazines, she has held various positions on the mastheads of Ecotone, Southern Humanities Review, Press Pause Press, and the Jabberwock Review and has interned for Lookout Books. Currently, she is the Senior Editor and Marketing Assistant for Encore magazine. She is happiest when listening to Dolly Parton tucked away in the Smoky Mountains, haunting the rivers and oceans of coastal Carolina, or talking about Anne Boleyn.
Education
MFA (fiction): University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2018
MA (literature/fiction writing): Mississippi State University, 2014
BA (literature/fiction writing): Carson-Newman University, 2012
