Katherine James is an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction. She is an extraordinary writer, a visual artist, just an insanely creative person, and I was floored by her book A Prayer for Orion: A Son’s Addiction and A Mother’s Love. Addiction seems like one of those things that is hidden in plain sight, a reality, not just an idea, and something we are all hungry to put language around so we can figure out how to face it, straight on. I loved learning from Katherine, and I’m so grateful she let us eavesdrop on her life and experience and wisdom.

Katherine James is the award-winning author of the novel, Can You See Anything Now? which won Christianity Today’s book of the year and was longlisted for the Doris Bakwin Prize, as well as a memoir, A Prayer for Orion, about her son’s journey through a heroin overdose. Her short stories, essays, and poetry have been published in a variety of journals and anthologies, and her short story Fishhook, was a finalist for a Narrative Spring Prize. 

She has an MFA from Columbia University where she received the Felipe P. De Alba fellowship and taught undergraduate fiction. 

Presently she’s working on a novel about a mute girl growing up in the Vietnam era.

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