About Me
Welcome readers. I am a novelist who writes about strong women, social issues, magical realism, and that constant search for home. Where is home for you? Is it a physical place or a mental scrapbook of memories? Let's explore together through the magic of stories and hopefully in the pages of my novels.
“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” ~ Maya Angelou
SHORT BIO:
Born in The Land of Enchantment, Kathleen M. Rodgers is a novelist whose work has appeared in Family Circle Magazine, Military Times, and in several anthologies. Her fifth novel, Llano County Mermaid Club, is slated for release early Fall 2025 by University of New Mexico Press and is represented by Tracy Crow Literary Agency. The Flying Cutterbucks, her fourth novel, was named a 2022 New Mexico Press Women Zia Book Award 1st Runner-up and a 2021 WILLA Literary Award Finalist in Contemporary Fiction from Women Writing the West. She was recently named the 2024 MWSA Mike Mullins Memorial WRITER OF THE YEAR at Military Writers Society of America's annual conference in San Diego, CA. She’s been featured in USA Today, The Associated Press, and many other publications. A native of Clovis, New Mexico, Kathleen resides in North Texas and is working on her sixth novel. She is available to speak at events and book clubs.
More info:
Jonathan Haupt, Executive Director of The Pat Conroy Literary Center, interviewed the author about her fourth novel, The Flying Cutterbucks, for Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. The audiobook released 2021 from Skyboat Media/Blackstone Publishing and is narrated by F Michelle Williams. Michelle and Kathleen were interviewed by nationally syndicated radio host Ed Kalegi on The Weekend With Ed Kalegi.
Seven Wings to Glory, Rodgers’ third novel, won the 2020 MWSA Founder's Award. In 2017, it won an Honorable Mention for War & Military in the Foreword Indies Book of the Year Awards and was reviewed in Southern Literary Review and internationally in Stars & Stripes.
Her second novel, Johnnie Come Lately, was featured on "The Author's Corner" on Public Radio." The audio edition is narrated by Grammy® Award-winning vocalist and Broadway actress Leslie Ellis. Thorndike Press, a leading large print publisher in the United States, released Johnnie Come Lately and Seven Wings to Glory in hardcover large print editions in early 2018.
The Final Salute, her debut novel, released in 2008 and was featured in USA Today, The Associated Press, and Military Times.
Anthology collections include those published by McGraw-Hill, University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, Health Communications, Inc., AMG Publishers, Press 53, and Bedazzled Ink.
In 2014, Rodgers was named a Distinguished Alumna from Tarrant County College/NE Campus. In 2017, the Clovis Municipal School Foundation in Clovis, NM awarded her the Purple Pride Hall of Honor Award under the "Sports and Entertainment" category. Three of her aviation poems from the book Because I Fly (McGraw-Hill) were featured in an exhibit at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island, NY.
Kathleen and her husband, Tom, a retired USAF fighter pilot/commercial airline pilot, raised two sons and enjoy spending time with their grandsons and two rescue dogs.
"Nevertheless, She Persisted!"
In Conversation with Award-Winning Host Julia Brewer Daily on AUTHORS OVER 50.
Theresa Bakken, audiobook narrator and host of Desideratum Podcast, chats with Kathleen and voice talent F. Michelle Williams.