Author photo by Jill Woodley

Katie grew up in the suburbs of Ottawa. An avid swimmer and movie-goer, she loved dreaming up plays for her friends to act out. She went to movie camp and took theatre workshops which eventually led to her landing the role of a spinster librarian in a grade eight school play…the pinnacle of her acting career.

After high school and a year traveling with the Katimavik youth program, Katie went on to study Film and English at Carleton University, TV Broadcasting at Algonquin College and filmmaking at the prestigious Summer Institute of Film and Television and Women in the Director’s Chair.

While studying and working in the restaurant business, she met and fell in love with a bartender. They married and had a daughter, Alexandra, who is now an elementary school teacher in Ottawa.

In the two decades that followed, Katie enjoyed an award-winning career as a screenwriter and director, collaborating on projects in animation, television and motion pictures. Supported by the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts, her films screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Sudbury Cinefest, Local Heroes International Film Festival and the NSI Film Exchange.

In 2013, Katie’s first-ever manuscript, Gone Monday, won top prize in the international Mslexia Women’s Novel Writing Competition. Buoyed by this unexpected success, and with her trusty golden retriever, Levi, by her side, Katie began writing another novel that was to become her publishing debut. The thriller Dark August is set in the Wellington West neighbourhood where she lives with her husband, Andy. The novel became an international bestseller and inspired a sequel. The follow-up to Dark August brings back her feisty protagonist for another cold case in the novel, Poison Lilies. Katie’s beloved Levi lives on in both novels.