Biography

Katherine Paterson, b. 1932, Huayin (formerly Qing Jiang), China, 1937, relocated to the U.S.

Both Paterson’s parents are Southern Presbyterian Missionaries from the United States.

Learned to speak Chinese before English.

Paterson moved back and forth from the U.S. and China several times, “I remember the many schools I attended in those years mostly as places where I felt fear and humiliation.”

In her school years, Paterson took solace in reading particularly: “The Secret Garden,” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, “The Yearling,” by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and “A Tale of Two  Cities” by Charles Dickens.

In 1954 Paterson studied English and literarue at King College in Bristol, Tennessee.

For a year, she taught sixth grade in Lovettsville, Virginia and later moved to Richmond to earn an M.A. in teaching at Presbyterian School of Christian Education.

Paterson traveled to Kobe, Japan to serve as a Presbyterian missionary and spent the next two years studying the Japanese language.

She returned to the U.S. in 1961 to attend the Union Theological Seminary in New York City where she met and later married Presbyterian minister, John Barstow.

She started her writing career with creating Sunday School curriculum units for her church that were geared to fifth and sixth grade readers.

Currently, Paterson lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, raising her family that includes several adopted children.