Kathryn Gahl

CONTACT:
Website: www.kathryngahl.com
Email: kathryngahl@gmail.com

BIO:
Kathryn Gahl began writing as farm girl and kept writing while earning dual degrees in English and nursing, working as a nurse manager, and raising two children, alone. Twice a Push Cart nominee, her multi-genre works appear in three anthologies, six ekphrastic shows, and numerous journals. Awards include Glimmer Train, Margie, Chautauqua, Rosebud, The Mill, Talking Writing, The Hal Prize for both fiction and poetry, New Millennium Writings, and Wisconsin People & Ideas for both fiction and poetry. The Council of Wisconsin Writers awarded her the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award. 

The Velocity of Love and The Yellow Toothbrush: A Memoir of Trauma and Mercy each received an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association. An avid ballroom dancer, she believes in the power of red lipstick, deep sleep, and compassion.

PUBLICATIONS:
Yes, No, I Don’t Know, Cornerstone Press, 2026
The Yellow Toothbrush: A Memoir of Trauma and Mercy (Two Shrews Press, 2022)
Hard Life, Hard Love, Dancing Girl Press, 2022
Messengers of the Gods: New & Selected Poems, Cornerstone Press, April 2022
The Velocity of Love (Water’s Edge Press, 2020)
Life Drawing Class, Cottage Corollary, 2009)

Poetry

Slow Dancing

When the earth started its pull
on my father,
he went, a willow would,
shoulders cracking,
knees cranky—where’s the chair—
unless a big band came to town
laid reality at his feet
each ankle and toe-tapping beat
asked for a dance
and got its way, he
nothing but a wisp of wheat
able to get up the Irish
in my mother, took her
across the floor, smoothed
her feathers except
the morning he found her on the floor, eyes
glassy from a stroke,
he asked for one more 
dance and she gave
him a stare,
a look of something longed for
or lost.

Appeared in Portage Magazine 2019