ABOUT KATE
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.
Kate 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, early modern literature and history, and Shakespeare. Raised a Baptist preacher’s daughter, Kate’s writing centers largely around small-town communities, music, southern families, and the complexities of religion. Having grown up between the Clinch and Smoky Mountain ranges, she’s especially interested in Appalachian folklore, legends, and hauntings. Independently, she also studies horror writing, gothic literature, and the classics.
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 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 serves on the board of Encore Southeast, where she’s also a contributing writer and the magazine’s managing editor. She teaches at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
She is happiest when listening to Dolly Parton tucked away somewhere in the Smoky Mountains, watching Dawson’s Creek, riding around the river in Hiltons with her childhood best friend, haunting the oceans of coastal Carolina, reading by the pond in her backyard, or talking about Henry VIII’s wives.
favorite stories & storytellers
Contemporary: Bloodroot by Amy Greene, Oral History by Lee Smith, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, Hamnet by Maggie O’Ferrell, The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw, In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, and anything by Jill McCorkle
Writers: Tayari Jones, David Joy, Kristen Arnett, Carmen Maria Machado, Yaa Gyasi, Kevin Wilson, Isabel Cañas, Leesa Cross-Smith, Silas House, Grady Hendrix, Wiley Cash, Garrard Conley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Clare Beams
Literary classics: The Great Gatsby, Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, Paradise Lost, The Canterbury Tales, The Color Purple, The Scarlet Letter, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Doctor Faustus, The Importance of Being Earnest
Shakespeare plays: Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III
Films: Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, The Wizard of Oz, Gaslight, Steel Magnolias, Ocean’s 11, Ever After, Easy A, Selena, 10 Things I Hate About You, Pulp Fiction, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, Double Indemnity, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Sweet Home Alabama, Sordid Lives, The Sound of Music
Horror films/series: Ready or Not, The Invitation, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream franchise, Urban Legend, Things Heard and Seen, The Haunting of Bly Manor, The Haunting of Hill House, The Others
Television: Dawson’s Creek, Wolf Hall, The Office, Schitt’s Creek, Superstore, Bob’s Burgers, What We Do in the Shadows, Game of Thrones, Grey’s Anatomy seasons 1-3, Desperate Housewives, One Tree Hill, Smallville, Nashville, Brooklyn 99, Vampire Diaries, Gilmore Girls
Historians: Tracy Borman, Natalie Grueninger, Elizabeth Norton, Alison Weir, Nicola Tallis, Owen Emmerson, Kate McCaffrey, Gareth Russell
Musicals: Wicked, Hadestown, The Phantom of the Opera, Six, Moulin Rouge, Rent, Chicago