About

The Brief Bio

Catharine is a world traveler, poet, and belly dancer. In her spare time, she is a writing coach and workshop facilitator. She has authored 27 fiction, non-fiction, and poetry books. She holds a MA in Creative Writing and her book Out Loud – An Adventure in Writing for Women was released in January 2025.

Book cover for Out Loud, a Writing Adventure for Women

The Longer Bio

Catharine is a world traveler, poet, and belly dancer. In her spare time, she is a writing coach, and workshop facilitator and has authored 27 books including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

She holds a BA in English from UCSB and an MA in English from SSU. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Nevada County Arts Council, Empire Club, and the organizing committees for the Sierra Poetry Festival and the Sierra Writers Conference. She lectures for OLLI at Sierra College and the OLLI program at the University of Hawaii and runs week-long writing workshops and a bi-monthly critique group.

She lives in Nevada City, CA, and to the great relief of her children, she is not currently writing a memoir.

An Example of her work

In her poetry collection, Stealing All the Blue, she channels the original words from long-forgotten manuscripts and letters of women of the 19th and 20th centuries who were pivotal to our culture. What we have is an expression of perhaps an inner life, perhaps closer to a truth that biographies can only guess at.

cover of a poetry book, Stealing all the Blue

In this episode of How To Write the Future, “Writing Through Chaos: Creativity and Resilience with Catharine Bramkamp,” host Beth Barany chats with fellow writing and creativity coach Catharine Bramkamp. Catharine dives into why creativity matters in the second half of life and shares resources to keep your spark going. Together, they explore how life’s chaos can actually fuel creativity and compare how artists in the past and today respond to turbulent times.