About this item
Ellen Emerson may be the last living survivor of the Johnstown flood. She was only four years old on May 31, 1889, when twenty million tons of water decimated her hometown of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Thousands perished in what was the worst natural disaster in U.S. history at the time. As we witness in The Johnstown Girls, the flood not only changed the course of history, but also the individual lives of those who survived it. A century later, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporters Ben Bragdon and Nina Collins set out to interview 103-year-old Ellen for Ben's feature article on the flood. When asked the secret to her longevity, Ellen simply attributes it to "restlessness." As we see, that restlessness is fueled by Ellen's innate belief that her twin sister Mary, who went missing in the flood, is somehow still alive.
About the Author
Kathleen George is the best selling author of a series of thrillers set in Pittsburgh where she lives and where she is a professor of theatre at the University of Pittsburgh. Her sixth novel SIMPLE (August 21, 2012) and her fifth novel HIDEOUT (August 16, 2011) have both won high praise by reviewers, including starred reviews. Her fourth, THE ODDS, out in paperback, was a finalist for an Edgar® award for best novel of the year in 2010. She is also the author of the acclaimed novels TAKEN, FALLEN, and AFTERIMAGE, the short story collection THE MAN IN THE BUICK, and the 2011 edited collection of stories, PITTSBURGH NOIR. Early on George Pelecanos wrote "I look forward to reading anything Kathleen George writes." An Entertainment Weekly reviewer wrote of THE ODDS, "If anyone is writing better police thrillers than George, I don't know who it is."
She is married to writer Hilary Masters, who asked her out twenty years ago because he figured she, a theatre director, would be interesting--he was tired of being around writers. On the first date, she told him she had begun writing (or more accurately had taken it up again, having said from the time she was seven that she wanted to be a writer) .
He thought, "Oh, no, not another one." But they had already hit it off and so it was too late. Now there are two of them in one household, shuffling around in sloppy clothes, coffee cups in hand, heading to paper, computer, typewriter.
"When I was eight, I took my accumulated miseries up to the attic," she wrote in "The Making of a Writer" "where I had discovered I could make an area, (a small stage set? ) with table, chair, notebooks and pen, and suddenly my world seemed whole and good--a secret and a treasure."
*******Detailed media bio and photos:
Kathleen George was born in Johnstown Pennsylvania. As a child, she wanted to be a writer. She wrote stories and plays in high school and in her undergraduate years as a creative writing major at the University of Pittsburgh. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in Theatre (also at Pitt) . By then she had made her home in Pittsburgh. For eight years she taught theatre at Carlow College, where she directed many plays. Then she accepted a teaching position at Pitt where she continued to direct and teach dramatic literature and playwriting; in the early 80s, she began to add fiction writing back into the mix. In 1988, she earned an M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing (also at Pitt!) on the side. She is a Professor in the Theatre Arts Department with a secondary appointment in the English Writing program.
Book-length fiction publications are: THE MAN IN THE BUICK, a collection of stories, BKMK press, 1999; TAKEN, a novel, Delacorte 2001; FALLEN, Dell 2004; AFTERIMAGE, St. Martin's Minotaur 2007; THE ODDS, St. Martin's Minotaur 2009; HIDEOUT St. Martin's Minotaur
