KAETHE KAUFFMAN, Ph.D. Author & Editor

              Her special Interests include:

 

             She studied writing privately with authors Jacqueline Mitchard, Anne LeClaire, Ron Powers & Lynn  Andrews.

             She attended the Maui Writers Conference and other writing conferences for 15 years.

             She formed a writing critique group: 1996 to the present

             She designed book covers for the Buddhist Studies Center Press, Honolulu, HI

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  My writing and later authoring career began with "My Daily Diary," a padded pink vinyl diary
with a well-used lock and key begun as soon as I could hold a pencil in my hand. Since then, I
have filled many journals with life secrets, one volume being so unsettling to an inquisitive
neighbor that she destroyed it rather than return it! It was in this way that I learned the power of
truthful writing!
Luckily, I grew up in a family that loved word play, practical jokes and laughter. To this day,
when my family gets together, we tell competitive funny stories, each person trying to outdo the
other. We save up our best stories for family gatherings and hone our tales privately on hapless
individuals before we sit at the dinner table and let fly our best zingers. It was later, as an author,
that I realized this family tradition was also a pleasant but devious way to frame, hide and
disguise unspoken thoughts and emotions.
My transition from writer to author began when, under my given name, Kaethe Kauffman, I was
fortunate enough to win first place for a non-fiction short story, The Girdle, in the 2015 national
competition, the Lorin Tarr Gill Writing Contest.
The transition from writer to author formally occurred from 1987 to 1993, when I was a regular
Opinion/Editorial columnist in a column called OUR TURN, for a chain of newspapers in
Northern California and Northern Nevada, the Tahoe World. I also published an Opinion
Editorial piece for the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, in 1992. Getting a
pithy message across quickly became a habit.
I have since published five prose-poems in two multiple-award-winning anthologies: Volutions,
(Savant 2014) edited by Suzanne Langford, and Running From the Pack (Savant 2016), edited
by Helen Davis.
I hold a BA degree from the University of Washington in Asian Studies, a second BA degree
from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in Fine Arts, an MFA from the University of California
Irvine in Fine Arts, and a PhD from the Union Graduate School in Art History and Women's
Studies.
The recipient of an Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation Award from the National Association of
Women Artists in New York City, The Twentieth Century Award for Achievement and the
International Woman of the Year Award from the International Biographical Centre, London,
I have and continue to enjoy lecturing and teaching internationally at universities in Madrid,
Spain; Prague, The Czech Republic; and New York City, Los Angeles and Honolulu in the USA.

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