Kathleen Kaufman: mother, wife and teacher. For a person that spends her days teaching literature to inner city high school students and nights keeping her son, husband, three cats and two rats from destroying the place, Kathleen still finds time to write. Because for Kathleen, writing isn’t a job or even an activity, it is an extension of herself. And educating through literature is Kathleen’s calling.
Born in a small Colorado mountain town and raised by two teachers, Kathleen spent her childhood either reading a book or writing a story. One could say it was because there wasn’t much else to do in her small town, but the truth was that Kathleen, even as a child, was nourished by literature.
In college, Kathleen’s passion for storytelling manifested in the world of theatre, where she took to performing, stage-managing and especially directing. Kathleen directed several plays and video projects during in her time at college and eventually went to work at a theatre as a stage manager where she worked on Tony-award winning productions and with world-renowned directors and producers.
Kathleen made the decision to go into education to find a meaningful outlet for her desire to explore the social impact of literature. Immediately finding a passion in the classroom, Kathleen spent several years working with high school students on how to use literature to learn about their history, society and community. For Kathleen, literature is a window into our world and using it for education results in genuine and personal growth.
Kathleen has always been a bookworm and embraces fiction’s ability to educate. The social commentary interwoven in the complex and elegant storytelling of The Tree Museum is testament to her belief in the power of fiction and shines with a wit and irony that both captures imagination while permeating a greater social consciousness.
