Contact the Writer

Email Dr. Laity at kate[at]kalaity.com; to arrange appearances or workshops, please email her representative at ainopress[at]gmail.com. Dr. Laity runs workshops on Creative Writing (fine arts or genre), Medieval Research Without Tears, Finding Your Mythic Muse, Keeping Your Creativity Alive (while working another job), and can tailor workshops in her areas of expertise to your group's specific needs.

Biography

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise -- William Blake

K. A. Laity was born on a cold December 17th in Lansing MI. She grew up in that state, where one is never more than six miles from a lake or river, spending a lot of time outdoors, camping, swimming, and fishing. Many weekends were spent in Kaleva where her family has a cabin on Bear Creek. Her father's side of the family is Finnish, her mother's a much broader assortment of American immigrant cultures. She has two brothers, one older, one younger. She is married to noted comics scholar Dr. Gene Kannenberg, Jr.

She attended Michigan State University, then moved to California to attend the University of Southern California. After graduating with an M.A. in International Relations, she moved to Boston and Cambridge, where eventually she worked for the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. After taking some courses at Harvard, she entered the University of Connecticut, where she received a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies, an interdisciplinary program.

At present she holds the position of Assistant Professor of English (Medieval) at The College of Saint Rose, where she teaches medieval literature, popular culture, creative writing and film. Dr. Laity's travels inform much of her writing, as do her polymathic studies in mythology, folklore, ritual, popular culture, and the Middle Ages.

Dr. Laity's 2003 novel Pelzmantel: A Medieval Tale (Spilled Candy Books) was nominated for the Aesop Prize and for the International Reading Association's Children's Book Award. She won the 2005 Eureka Short Story Fellowship and a 2006 Finlandia Foundation grant for her work on the forthcoming story collection Unikirja, as well as the 2005 UHD Faculty Award for Scholarship/Creativity and a 2007 Scholars and Artists grant from the College of Saint Rose. Her first story submitted for publication, "Revelation," won the Clive Barker Lord of Illusions Short Story Contest and that author's high praise.

Artist Statement

Each story has its own voice. My job is to find it. I write across genres, employing very different techniques from one project to the next, yet my vision remains unmistakable. If you must have a label, you might call my style tenebrism (a term usually applied to painters like Caravaggio) because a fascination with the dramatic contrasts of light and darkness fills many of my tales. At the center of much of my work is a concern with storytelling itself. I delve into the mythic often and explore the richness of folk and fairy tales. I believe the greatest sorrow of this age is our separation from our roots in the earth, which has made so many people forget that we are all connected, that everything is alive. I agree wholeheartedly with Roald Dahl that "those who do not believe in magic will never find it."