Katherine Pew is an author who loves writing stories about transformation, especially in nature and art.
Her forthcoming debut picture book, Little Bat and the Queens of the Night, illustrated by Charles Santoso and published by Anne Schwartz Books, is scheduled for publication in summer 2027.
Katherine lives with her family in the Arizona desert (the setting for Little Bat), where she loves hiking in the canyons, watching wildlife in the (usually) dry riverbed behind her house, and evening swims to cool off. Her favorite time of year is monsoon season, when rains quench the thirsty desert, the river runs, and croaking toads emerge from the sand to lay eggs, hatch into tadpoles, and become toadlets.
She spent childhood summers in Maine hunting for sea glass in Sea Glass Cave, visiting the artist Winslow Homer’s studio, and exploring the nearby cliff walk on stormy days.
She has always loved bedtime stories. One favorite childhood picture book was Lore Segal’s Tell Me a Mitzi (illustrated by Harriet Pincus), especially the story when Mitzi wakes up early while her parents are still sleeping, bundles up her baby brother, and hails a taxi to visit her grandparents. Another was Roger Duvoisin’s Veronica, about an attention-seeking hippo who travels to the big city to seek her fortune but accidentally causes trouble and gets thrown in jail, rescued, and given a celebratory homecoming in the end.
Her (Katherine’s, not Veronica’s) favorite dessert is sticky toffee pudding.
