Kathleen McCormick

Kathleen Z. McCormick is the award-winning author of Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian Sometimes Awesome but Mostly Creepy Childhood, a funny, dark, and deeply personal coming-of-age novel about growing up in an Irish-Italian Catholic family.

Kathleen is also Professor Emerita of Literature and Writing at Purchase College, SUNY, where she taught for more than 30 years. Her fiction and creative work have appeared in Witness, South Carolina Review, Zone 3, Paterson Literary Review, Superstition Review, Kestrel, and other literary publications.

Before turning much of her attention to creative writing, Kathleen built a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher. Her book The Culture of Reading and the Teaching of English received the Modern Language Association’s Mina Shaughnessy Award, and she has written and edited several books on literature, reading, James Joyce, and Italian-American culture.

She has also received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Award, which recognizes Italian-American scholars for outstanding contributions to their professions and communities.

These days, Kathleen brings that lifelong love of storytelling, literature, family, and culture to her fiction, often with a healthy dose of humor about the strange things we believe when we’re growing up.

Dodging Satan has most recently been shortlisted for an International Rubery Book Award and it won a gold medal from Foreword Review in Humor. Other awards include:

• 2020 Independent Press Award, Humor & Wit.

• 2019 Topshelf Indie Book Award, First Place in First Novels Under 60,000 words

• 2019 Topshelf Indie Book Cover Award

• 2018 Readers’ Favorites Book Award, Bronze Medal in Religious Themed Fiction

• 2018 International Book Award, Finalist in Humor

• 2017 NYC Big Book Award, Silver Medal in Humor

• 2017 Illumination Book Awards—Catholic Books: Bronze Medal

• 2017 ELit Bronze Medal in Humor

• 2016 Colorado Independent Publishers Association, EVVY Awards: Gold Medal for Religion & Spirituality; Silver Medal for Humor

The book has been in the top 10 of its Kindle category in July and December of 2016.

Reviewers are finding Dodging Satan to be both humorous and poignant.

• Josephine Hendin (Heart Breakers: Women and Violence in Contemporary Culture and Literature) says that Dodging Satan "outdoes Mary McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood in its wit, intelligence and irresistible mixture of realism and charm. It is simply a joy to read."

• Edvige Giunta (Writing with an Accent and co-editor of Personal Effects) writes: "There's magic in this world—and while we are charmed by its glow, we are also repeatedly unsettled by the darkness behind that glow. We follow Bridget with trepidation, captivated by her vulnerability and her fierceness."

• Michael P. Carroll (Catholic Cults and Devotions and many other studies of popular Catholicism) comments that "this playful but gripping coming of age tale draws upon a mishmash of Catholic popular culture to create outrageous narratives that helps the narrator to make sense of it all."

Please contact Kathy if you are interested in having her do a reading at your school or be part of a bookclub discussion.