Katherine Pryor was born in Berkeley, California, and spent her early childhood traveling back and forth to her parents’ separate homes in the Bay Area, Sonoma County, and San Juan Capistrano. When she was 14, she moved to Flagstaff, Arizona and fell in love with the freedom of wide-open spaces. She attended Northern Arizona University’s School of Communication on an academic scholarship and graduated with Honors in 2000 before spending the next few years backpacking in foreign countries, skiing in Idaho, and working odd jobs while trying to become a novelist. When she got tired of waiting tables and bartending, she enrolled in graduate school at Antioch University Seattle’s Center for Creative Change. She graduated with an MA from the Environment & Community program in 2008, and found her voice as an advocate for healthy, fair, and sustainable food. She also met the love of her life, a classmate she married in 2010.
Katherine worked on food issues with Food & Water Watch, Washington Toxics Coalition, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Health Care Without Harm. She and her husband founded South Park Fresh Starts, which grows organic vegetable plant starts for a food bank in south Seattle, and operated Truck Farm Seattle as part of a national fleet of trucks taking garden education to kids in an unusual way. However, as much as she loved advocacy, she missed writing, and began simply writing in a journal each morning for fun. One day, she was advocating for farm to school funding in the state capital when a dad told a story about his daughter refusing to eat spinach until she grew it in her school garden. Katherine knew immediately she wanted to write that story into a picture book. After completing a night course at North Seattle Community College called Writing for Children and Young Adults, Sylvia’s Spinach was published in 2012. It now has over 100,000 copies in print.
Katherine has since published many books about food, gardens, and the natural world. Her second picture book, Zora’s Zucchini, won the 2016 Growing Good Kids Book Award from the Junior Master Gardener Program and the American Horticultural Society. Her first board book, Hello, Garden!, won the 2022 Gold Medal in Children’s Literature (0-3) Benjamin Franklin Award from the Independent Book Publishers Association. Katherine has also written many unpublished manuscripts that may never become actual books. She’s okay with that. Katherine has come to understand that writing will always be part of her life, and that each draft is a learning experience. She currently divides her time between writing new material, consulting for organizations working to make the world a better place, and chasing her young twins around their home on Washington’s Whidbey Island.
Katherine is represented by Adria Goetz of P.S. Literary Agency.
