Kathleen Donohoe

Kathleen is the author of the novels Ghosts of the Missing and Ashes of Fiery Weather, which was named one of Book Riot’s 100 Must-Read New York City Novels. Her stories and essays have appeared in Web Conjunctions, Washington Square, SNReview, Harpur Palate, Irish America Magazine, and the anthology The Writing Irish of New York. She also writes on Medium.

Kathleen grew up on Avenue J in Midwood. Her mother was a nurse at Kings County Hospital, and her father and four uncles were New York City firefighters.

An amateur genealogist, she spends a great deal of time poring over censuses and other records, piecing together the lives of her ancestors, most of whom resided in Manhattan and Brooklyn. This work has led her to appreciate the need to preserve the stories of New Yorkers, in their own voices.

Besides Midwood, she has lived in Brooklyn Heights, Carroll Gardens and Park Slope. For the past five years, she has been living in Kensington, where she spent all of quarantine in an eight-hundred-square foot apartment with her husband and son. Currently she is at work on her next novel, Saints in Brooklyn.