Catherine Gourley

Background

Catherine Gourley was born on December 18, 1950, in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, United States. Her father Robert was a mail carrier, and her mother, Ruth Hannon, served as a government employee.

Education

Catherine Gourley revealed her interest in writing at an early age. She used to tape short stories on her mother’s manual typewriter. Ruth, her mother, encouraged the girl in her passion.

Raised in an extended family, Gourley listened to many funny stories about the relationships between her aunts and cousins, and their everyday life. That was how the young girl learned about the importance of storytelling in people’s lives.

Later, Catherine Gourley received a Master of Arts degree in education.

Career

Catherine Gourley started her career as an educator. From 1972 to 1983, she worked in her native Wilkes-Barre as a teacher of English for grades seven through twelve. Three years after she left the post, Gourley worked for a year as an artist in residence at a Creative Arts Center in Corpus Christi, Texas.

While there, Gourley used memories of her own Irish mining family to write one of her early short stories, ‘Breaker Boy’ that received a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Due to the award, the story which didn’t appear in print was adapted into a radio play in 1986 and broadcasted on public radio around the country.

The following year, Gourley occupied the post of an assistant communications manager at the Office for Institutional Advancement of Rosary College of Arts and Sciences in River Forest, Illinois. Gourley turned the heritage of ‘Breaker Boy’ into a historical novel, ‘The Courtship of Joanna’, which was set in Pennsylvania during the 1800s. The novel which appeared in print in 1988, was about a sixteen-year-old girl named Joanna who left her home to work as a domestic servant for an Irish family, thus earning money so her father could afford to buy some river property.

A year after the publication, the author relocated to Middletown, Connecticut where she pursued her writing career at Weekly Reader Corporation editing Special Projects and a literature Read Magazine for middle school students. This time, she also was one of the initiators of restoring the Barnard College Young Adult Biography Series which she also edited from 1995 collaborating with Barnard College and a publisher Conari Press in Berkeley, California.

In 1997, Catherine Gourley came home, to Northeastern Pennsylvania where she devoted all her time to writing. Since then, she has spent a lot of time exploring the archives, old periodicals, and people’s diaries and letters to produce her factual nonfiction works about the past, whether that be ‘Hunting Neptune's Giants: True Stories of American Whaling’, the sea story ‘Sharks! True Stories and Legends’ or biographies ‘Wheels of Time: A Picture Biography of Henry Ford’ and ‘Never Turn Back: A Biography of Beryl Markham’.

Living in Pennsylvania, Gourley combines her writing activity with other allied tasks. She is a consultant in print and visual literacy for The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., and The Film Foundation. She serves as the principal curriculum writer for The Story of Movies, the literacy educational outreach program of The Film Foundation, and directs projects for the Letters About Literature, a reading and writing promotion program of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. She has traveled with professional development seminars both around the country and abroad.

One of the most recent published works of Catherine Gourley is ‘The Horrors of Andersonville: Life and Death Inside a Civil War Prison’.

Achievements

• Catherine Gourley is an accomplished author and educator whose historically correct novels with realistic atmosphere and deft characterizations are praised both by critics and readers.
  
  The author has been a recipient of such prestigious awards and distinctions, as Jefferson Cup Award, and Parents' Choice Award.
  
  Her books have been many times both in short-lists and among winners of well-known nominations, including Children's Book Council Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People, Booklist's Top 10 Series Nonfiction for Youth, Honor Book by Society of School Librarians International, Amelia Bloomer Project ‘best nonfiction books for feminist literature for young adults’, Bank Street Best Books of the Year, and Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best among others.
  
  In 2010, ‘The Horrors of Andersonville’ was chosen by the Junior Library Guild as the best book of the year.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Gibson Girls and Suffragists: Perceptions of Women from 1900 to 1918

    (Looks at the roles of American women at the turn of the c...)

    2008
  • Wheels of Time: A Picture Biography of Henry Ford

    (biography of the engineer and industrialist whose innovat...)

    1997
  • War, Women, and the News: How Female Journalists Won the Battle to Cover World War II

    (The author provides a look at the influential and powerfu...)

    2007
  • Society Sisters: Stories of Women Who Fought for Social Justice in America

    (The historical guide provides a look at the woman of the ...)

    2003
  • Flappers and the New American Woman: Perceptions of Women from 1918 Through the 1920s

    (Looks at the role of women in postwar America, discussing...)

    2008
  • Welcome to Felicity's World, 1774: Growing Up in Colonial America

    (Through the eyes of nine-year-old Felicity Merriman, the ...)

    1999
  • Good Girl Work: Factories, Sweatshops, and How Women Changed Their Role in the American Workforce

    (The book discusses the girls and women in the industrial ...)

    1999
  • The Horrors of Andersonville: Life and Death Inside a Civil War Prison

    (Relying heavily on first-person reports and legal documen...)

    2010
  • Welcome to Samantha's World, 1904: Growing Up in America's New Century

    (An in-depth look at life for girls and women in America i...)

    1999
  • Rosie and Mrs. America: Perceptions of Women in the 1930s and 1940s

    (The author looks at the roles of American women in the 19...)

    2008
  • Who Was Maria Tallchief?

    (A book with black-and-white illustrations provides visual...)

    2002
  • Hunting Neptune's Giants

    (Authentic archival material preserved at The Mystic Seapo...)

    1995
  • Beryl Markham: Never Turn Back

    (Markham, an early pioneer in aviation, was a passionate, ...)

    1997
  • Sharks! True Stories and Legends

    (A collection of facts and stories, both historical and tr...)

    1996
  • The Courtship of Joanna 1989
  • Welcome to Molly's World Growing Up in World War Two America 1999

Views

Quotations: "At some point, the writer gives away her story, sharing it with others who bring their own interpretation to the piece. It is a little like raising a child and then waving good-bye at the door when the child finally sets out on her own."

Interests

• history

Connections

Catherine Gourley married Dennis Gourley, a social work administrator, on July 7, 1972.

Mother:

Ruth Hannon

husband:

Dennis Gourley