Kathleen Witkowska Tarr’s book We Are All Poets Here (VP&D House, 2018) is narrative nonfiction, part-memoir, part-biography, which involves Thomas Merton and his 1968 surprise sojourn to Alaska.

Alaska was one of the last places the Trappist monk and spiritual thinker saw before he met his tragic, accidental death in 1968.

Kathleen is a long-time Alaskan and nonfiction writer who has lived in many parts of the state. Her work has appeared in a wide range of literary and commercial publications, including contributions to the anthologies, We Are Already One, 1915-2015, Thomas Merton’s Message of Hope (Fons Vitae Press, 2015), and Merton & the World’s Indigenous Wisdom (2018).

Kathleen currently sits on the board of the Alaska Humanities Forum. For two years she served as a Mullin Scholar at USC’s Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, and is a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Kathleen was named a William Shannon Fellow by the International Thomas Merton Society and is the founder of the Alaska Chapter of the International Thomas Merton Society. Kathleen earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh in 2005.

She lives and writes in Anchorage under the shadow of the Chugach Mountains.

Kathleen Tarr