Summary
Kathryn Reiss wrote her first novel, Time Windows, after college while she lived in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar and had nothing left to read in English. Now she is the award-winning author of 20 novels of suspense for middle grade and young adult readers, published by Harcourt, Scholastic, American Girl, and Rosen Windmill. Five of her books are audiobooks with Tantor Media and Recorded Books. Three have been optioned for film.
Time Windows was selected by the American Library Association as a "Best Book for Young Adults," received YALSA's "Popular Paperback for Young Adults" award and the State of Maryland's "Blackeyed Susan Young Reader Medal." Dreadful Sorry, also a YALSA Popular Paperback for Young Adults, was a featured selection of the Junior Library Guild and was named "Pick of the Crop" in The School Library Journal starred review. Pale Phoenix and PaperQuake were nominated for the Mystery Writers of America's "Edgar Allan Poe" award, and PaperQuake additionally was named one of YALSA’s ‘Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults.’ Paint By Magic won a place on VOYA’s ‘Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers’ and is an International School Librarians Association honor book.
Ms. Reiss has been a Writer in Residence for the Princeton Arts Council, a recipient of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Grant for Writers, and has been a featured speaker with (among others) Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, The Northern California Library Association, The International Reading Association, Fresno County Office of Education, California Reading Association, The American Library Association, and the National Council of Teachers of English. She has been retained as an Expert Witness in a high-profile plagiarism case concerning Young Adult literature, was featured in The Atlantic as one of several ‘highly successful young adult fiction authors and garnered a several-page spread in Young Adult Literature in the 21st Century, a college textbook by Pam B. Cole.
She lives in a rambling historic house in Northern California with two rescue dogs, two rescue cats, her husband (and best friend) and the last of their seven children still in the nest.
Education
- B.A. in English and German, Duke University
- M.F.A. in Creative Writing, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.