Explore the Worlds of A. Catherine Noon

My official bio came to me when mulling over my two main passions: words and yarn. It hit me that they’re the same thing: “For author and textile artist A. Catherine Noon, it’s all about the yarn, both metaphorical and literal – spinning a yarn, knitting with yarn, weaving, sewing, painting, sharing stories and good times over a cup of coffee with dark chocolate.”

I’m a born storyteller. I love to talk and I love to write. I sometimes feel, in my heart of hearts, that the internet was developed by and for people like me – natural networkers who love to talk with anybody about anything. After Y2K, the world belongs to the geeks. Teaching is a natural extension of that instinct. I find I’m just as passionate about helping other people get onto the page as I am about my own writing.

I’ve written all sorts of things: fantasy, science fiction, autobiography, cooking, spirituality, and a host of other topics. I recently rediscovered a love of poetry, because it uses words to express the inexpressible. Essays, too, have fascinated me for a long time, though I didn’t know what name to call the style of writing I liked – it certainly wasn’t the dry-as-bones “essays” from high school days. Phillip Lopate did a lot of good for the field of letters in general, and me in particular, when he published his ode to the essay, The Art of the Personal Essay. Turns out, I’m a fan of Montaigne. Now that I’m an author and have to promote myself, I get to write essays for my different blogs. I even have a basket of topics on which I feel confident to write.

Finding one’s voice can be a lifelong pursuit. I know it has been for me. Being able to own that voice, and speak in that voice, takes practice and gentleness. A word at a time, we learn to get, and stay, on the page. The same goes for knitting. It’s a very Zen process of accumulating stitches and those stitches turn into a garment, or art object, or soft furnishing, or a toy, or anything the knitter can conceive.

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