Meet Novelist Katherine Towler

Local residents and visitors to Cape Ann will have an opportunity to meet and greet author Katherine Towler on Wednesday, Sept. 15, at 7:00 p.m. at the Rockport Public Library. Towler has written a trilogy of novels set on a fictional New England island. The series chronicles two generations of two island families and the impact of recent wars on their community.

Her latest work, ‘Island Light,’ tells the story of three people on the island as the country prepares for war in the Persian Gulf. A fire causes their lives to intersect unexpectedly, tearing them from their private but determined battles with the past, and propelling them into the unknown future of loss, love, and redemption.

The first book in the series, ‘Snow Island,’ was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers title, a Borders Original Voices title, and an Indiebound selection. The Boston Globe called it ‘luminous and moving.’ Publishers Weekly described the second book, ‘Evening Ferry,’ as ‘gracefully written.’

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Towler earned an M.A. in Writing at Johns Hopkins and an M.A. in English Literature at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. She has taught creative writing to students of all ages. Currently she teaches graduate students in the low residency MFA Program in Writing at Southern New Hampshire University and works as a freelance writer specializing in publications and promotional materials for schools and non-profits.

Towler has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. She has also published poetry, short stories, and a series of interviews with prominent writers and poets.

The Meet the Author series is sponsored by the Rockport Public Library, the Friends of the Library, and Toad Hall Bookstore, which donates net income to environmental projects.

The next event in the series will be on Saturday, Sept. 25, at 7:00 p.m. when David Fisichella will discuss his memoir, ‘Seven-tenths: Love, Piracy, and Science at Sea.’ The book is a memoir of his courtship with a blind oceanographer who spends her life at sea. While studying the oceans, they share love, adventure, heavy weather, an equator crossing, and a pirate attack off the coast of Somalia.