Kathy love Cowen, author of The Walking Stick Trilogy, was born and raised in Kansas. She attended Baker University in Baldwin, Kansas, as an art major. She and her husband Al live on the Texas coast. Kathy has one son, Wesley, a Purple Heart veteran of two wars. In her youth, Kathy would spend time on her aunt’s cattle ranch in Oklahoma. Her aunt was a feisty woman that influenced her life greatly. In the evenings, she would spin stories of their “Indian” ancestors. Through research, Kathy has been able to establish a paper trail to her Cherokee heritage. Her debut novel evolved from that research. The Walking Stick is a young adult series set in the Oklahoma Indian Territory during the mid-1800. When Kathy is not writing, she enjoys entertaining family at the beach, painting and graphic design. Most of what she does, involves the assistance of a fat black cat named Bandit. Hypnotized by the blinking cursor, Bandit claims co-authorship of the series and is responsible for any unintentional oversights in the manuscript.

Before she became a writer, Kathy worked for a sea turtle conservation group, and became one of two individuals in Texas, to be permitted to raise a non-releasable sea turtle in her home for educational and fundraising purposes. Through this connection, and as a certified master diver, and freelance videographer, Kathy started writing the scripts and filming underwater research. She produced various short documentaries for graduate students studying at Texas A. & M. University Galveston and the Institute of Marine Life Sciences. Her work included the underwater filming of the Houston Lighting and Power coal-ash artificial reef project in the Gulf of Mexico. Kathy acquired the funding and coordinated the coral bleaching study for Guanaja, Honduras.

Animals have always played an important role in Kathy’s life and are key to her happiness. She enjoys an unusual empathy with her fur bearing friends, and chooses to believe that this appreciation for nature is linked to her Native American lineage. The depth of her perception into their personalities becomes apparent in the humorous, secondary characters woven into The Walking Stick Trilogy.