(Photo by Skylar Reeves Photography.

Flower from The Bodyguard cover!)

New York timesBestselling Author Katherine Center wrote her first novel in the sixth grade (fan fiction about Duran Duran) and got hooked. From then on, she was doomed to want to be a writer—obsessively working on poems, essays, and stories, as well as memorizing lyrics, keeping countless journals, and reading constantly.

She won a creative writing scholarship in high school, and then went on to major in creative writing at Vassar College, where she won the Vassar College Fiction Prize. At 22, she won a fellowship to the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program and moved home to Texas with plans to become Jane Austen ASAP.

Didn’t happen quite that way. Of course. Instead, she began a decade of struggling, agonizing, and questioning the meaning of life before finally finding a fairy-godmother-like agent and getting a dream-come-true book deal for her debut novel, The Bright Side of Disaster.

A total happy ending. And also, just the beginning.

Katherine firmly believes that our struggles lead us to our strengths, and the years of not getting published, she’s decided, were good for her. They forced her to define who she is and what she cares about. They forced her to figure out why she writes at all. They forced her to clarify for herself what she loves in stories as a reader—to create her own definitition of “good writing” from the inside out.

Katherine is constantly thinking about craft, and looking for stories to admire, and working to get better at storytelling—but she’s very careful about what “better” means. For her, getting better as a writer means getting clearer and clearer about what she, herself, loves and looks for in stories—and using everything she knows about writing to do those things in the spirit of service for others.

Katherine believes the single most inspiring thing about the human race is the way life knocks us down over and over and over, but we just keep on getting back up.

She believes the best stories let you get so lost, you forget you’re reading at all—and then you find your way back out a little bit changed.

Katherine also believes joy is just as important as sorrow.

That’s why her stories are always about resilience and struggle and finding ways to savor life’s moments of grace. That’s why her characters joke around so much, even in the shadow of hardship. And that’s why Katherine will never, ever, run the main character over with a bus in the final chapter.

That’s a promise.

Katherine is always looking for reasons to be hopeful, and opportunities to laugh, and ways of getting inspired—both in real life and in fiction. She believes that the only compass you can follow as a writer is to write the story you, yourself, long to read.

Photo: Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle

FUN FACTS ABOUT KATHERINE

• She almost went to art school, instead.

• She designed this website.

• Her maternal grandmother was an identical twin.

• She had her first kiss on a Greek island. Or—depending on how you define “first kiss”—possibly out by the trash cans behind her middle school gym.

• She memorized Lewis Carroll’s poem The Walrus and the Carpenter in third grade and still remembers it.

• She memorized Billy Collins’ poem Forgetfuness in graduate school and has already forgotten it.

• She decided to go to Vassar College for two reasons: (1) there was no math requirement, and (2) Meryl Streep went there.

• She went on a hiking trip very similar to the one in Happiness for Beginners when she was in college.

• She went to the same high school as Wes Anderson and was a freshman when he was a senior.

• She was on the drum corps in high school and still knows all the beats.

• She totally idolizes her fabulous mother.

• She wonders if she might have been a sign painter in another life. Or a book binder. Or a USO singer.

• Her beloved uncle Herman owned a charming Used, Rare, Out-of-Print bookstore in an old house with leather wingback chairs called the Detering Book Gallery.

• She is a fifth-generation Texan, and The Bodyguard is set on her family’s working cattle ranch outside of Houston.

• Back in college, she once had dinner with Stephen King and John Irving at the same time (with her senior creative writing class).

• She is one-quarter German, but she’s never been to Germany.

• She based the goat farm in The Lost Husband on her friends Christian and Lisa Seger’s place, Blue Heron Farm.

• She is the middle of three sisters and is still, at heart, a classically unremarkable middle child.

• The only crafty thing she’s truly bad at is knitting.

• Her favorite hobby is cracking jokes with her husband.

• Her favorite font is Rockwell.

• Her favorite fruit is figs. But she’s allergic to them.

• She is a mediocre cook, honestly. But she makes fantastic canned biscuit doughnuts.

• She never finished memorizing her multiplication tables.

• Her grandmother was a dancer in Houston in the 1930s and once danced in a show with Clark Gable.

• Her mother-in-law is Canadian, and when her kids were little, they referred to themselves as “Texas-Canadians.”

• She discovered while researching face blindness for her novel Hello Stranger that she is what they call a “super recognizer” for faces—and scored high enough on tests that she could work for the police identifying suspects.

• Dog person. But could switch to cat person in a pinch. Also loves hedgehogs and Peruvian long-haired Guinea pigs.

Official current author photo!

(Photo credit: Skylar Reeves Photography)

SHORT BIO (great for introductions!):

BookPage calls Katherine Center “the reigning queen of comfort reads.” She’s the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including How to Walk Away, Things You Save in a Fire, and her newest, The Bodyguard. Katherine writes laugh-and-cry books about how life knocks us down—and how we get back up. She’s been compared to both Jane Austen and Nora Ephron, and the Dallas Morning News calls her stories, “satisfying in the most soul-nourishing way.” Her books have made countless Best-Of lists, and the movie adaptation of her novel The Lost Husband (starring Josh Duhamel) hit #1 on Netflix. and her novel Happiness for Beginners is in production now as a Netflix original starring Ellie Kemper. Katherine’s summer 2022 book, The Bodyguard, was an instant New York Times bestseller, a People Best New Books pick, and was nominated for Book of the Year by Goodreads and Book of the Month Club and an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Books of the Year. Bestselling author Emily Henry calls The Bodyguard “a shot of pure joy,” and bestselling author Helen Hoang calls it “a perfect feel-good rom-com.” Katherine lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her husband, two kids, and their fluffy-but-fierce dog.

Longer BIO:

Katherine Center is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of nine novels, including The Bodyguard, How to Walk Away, and Things You Save in a Fire. She writes bittersweet, comic, laugh-and-cry stories about love and family. Her fourth novel, The Lost Husband became a feature film starring Josh Duhamel that hit #1 on Netflix, and her novel Happiness for Beginners is in production as a Netflix original movie starring Ellie Kemper.

USA Today says, “Katherine Center writes amazing heartwarming novels.” The Dallas Morning News says, “Reading a book by Katherine Center is like having a long lunch conversation with an old friend you haven’t seen for a while — familiar, cozy and satisfying in the most soul-nourishing way.” And #1 NYT bestselling author Jodi Picoult says of Things You Save in a Fire, “Just read it, and thank me later.”

BookPage calls The Bright Side of Disaster, “beautifully penned and truly memorable.” People calls The Lost Husband, “A sweet tale about creating the family you need.” And InStyle says of Happiness for Beginners, “If you’re anything like us, you’ll read this book in one sitting.”

Katherine’s novels have been published in translation all around the world, and her books have made countless Best-Of lists, including Amazon’s Top 100 Books of 2019, Goodreads’ Best Books of the Year, BookBub’s Best-Loved Books of 2019, the Indie Next Great Reads List, BookList’s Top Ten Women’s Fiction, and many, many more.

Katherine lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her awesome husband, two fun teenagers, and their fluffy-but-fierce dog.