Meet R. Cathey Daniels

Hi, thanks for visiting! I’m R. Cathey Daniels and I wrote a novel by the name of Live Caught, published by the wonderful Black Lawrence Press (April, 2022).

It’s set mainly in the mountains of Western North Carolina where I grew up, and where my writing career began, way back in 5^th grade. A couple of kids down the street joined me to start a neighborhood bi-weekly newspaper which we sold for 3 cents per copy, but got paid more like 30 cents per copy either because our neighbors were unusually generous or because we mumbled while trying to make a sale at their front door.

I kept writing all through high school and college and during graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill, where I made sure I took enough math classes to get a teaching certificate, because, handy career tip, there’s always a shortage of math teachers. While raising young children, I took a break from teaching math in East TN and started submitting feature stories to the local newspaper, and eventually became an award winning reporter focusing on science coming out of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Also reported on local education, city council, and sports. (It was a small newspaper.)

Ended up in the two-year Stanford Online Writing Certificate program for novel writing, and that’s how Live Caught was birthed. Subsequently Live Caught won first prize in the 2018 Retreat West First Chapter Competition and earned semi-finalist in the 2020 University of New Orleans Press Novel Contest.

Can’t tell you how happy I was when Diane Goettel from Black Lawrence Press called from New York to tell me she wanted to publish Live Caught.

I try to write every day, but when not writing, I can be found just about anywhere that’s quiet, unless you want to count CrossFit classes and shooting hoops in the backyard with my grandkids.