I write fiction and nonfiction and teach creative writing and literature. I am currently a visiting assistant professor at the College of Wooster, in Wooster, Ohio.

I have a M.A. in fiction writing and a Ph.D. in English (specializing in eighteenth-century British literature) from the University of Texas at Austin. For the 2010-2011 academic year, I was supported by an AAUW American Dissertation Fellowship and a PEO Scholar Award while I finished my dissertation and worked on my next novel. Previously, I worked for two years as a public services intern at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center and taught creative writing, literature, and rhetoric/composition at UT. (Learn more about my CV or teaching.)

My novel Alcestis, a retelling of the Greek myth, was published by Soho Press in February 2010. Alcestis won the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award from the Publishing Triangle in 2011 and was also a finalist for the Lesbian Debut Fiction Award from the Lambda Literary Association and the BSFS Compton Crook Award in the same year.

My short-short “Things That Make One’s Heart Beat Faster” is available in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 19.

I grew up in Lancaster, PA, in a modern house in the woods. I went to Smith College and graduated as a major in classical studies, though “generalist” or “dilettante” would’ve been more appropriate. I studied abroad at Trinity College in Dublin for a year. I’ve also lived in Washington, D.C., and Ashland, Oregon, for short periods. Then I went to Austin to write and stayed for the fish tacos and literary criticism. Now I’m in Wooster, Ohio, which is rather like Lancaster in some ways, and not at all like it in others.

Some of my favorite books (and plays — poetry in another list later, maybe) are:

The Life of Johnson, A Room of One’s Own, Riddley Walker, The Gate to Women’s Country, His Dark Materials, Possession, Fingersmith, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Middlemarch, Pride & Prejudice, Persuasion, Clarissa, The Left Hand of Darkness, Portrait of a Lady, China Mountain Zhang, Orlando, The Bacchae, Tam Lin, The Waves, Evelina, Alias Grace, Truth & Beauty, Moll Flanders, Villette, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Good Omens, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry IV, Cotillion, Doomsday Book, Gaudy Night — I have to stop somewhere.

You can contact me at: katharinebeutner at gmail dot com. My agent is Diana Fox.