Cathy Day is the author of two books. Her most recent work is Comeback Season (Free Press, 2008), part memoir about life as a single woman and part sports story about the Indianapolis Colts Super Bowl season in 2006.
Her first book was The Circus in Winter (Harcourt, 2004), a fictional history of her hometown.
The Circus in Winter was a finalist for the GLCA New Writers Award, the Great Lakes Book Award, and the Story Prize, and is being adapted into a musical.
Her stories and essays have appeared most recently in Pank, Sports Illustrated, The Millions, North American Review, and Ninth Letter and elsewhere. Her essay, “Where Do You Want Me to Sit?” appeared in Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project. Ed. Anna Leahy, published by Multilingual Matters Ltd., one of the first books on creative writing pedagogy.
The Circus in Winter was a finalist for three book contests: the Story Prize, the Great Lakes Book Award, and the GLCA New Writer Award. It was a Barnes & Noble “Discover” selection, an “Original Voices” pick at Borders, and a Best Book of 2004 on Amazon.com. Circus has been translated into both German and Czech. Her fiction and nonfiction have been broadcast on NPR’s ” Selected Shorts” and “Studio 360.”
Strange but true: The Circus in Winter was the solution to the New York Times Magazine acrostic puzzle in February 2005.
Cathy has been the recipient of a Beatrice, Benjamin and Richard Bader Fellowship in the Visual Arts of the Theatre from Harvard University’s Houghton Library, a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a Bush Artist Fellowship, a New Jersey Arts Council Grant, and other university research grants. She’s held teaching positions at Minnesota State University-Mankato, The College of New Jersey, and the University of Pittsburgh.
Currently, she lives in Muncie, Indiana and teaches at Ball State University, where she’s currently serving as the Acting Chair of the Department of English.
In addition to the blog you’ll find here, “The Big Thing,” she maintains blogs about her novel-writing class, her linked stories class, and literary citizenship.