Goldhammer, Catherine

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Goldhammer, Catherine

PERSONAL:

Children: a daughter. Education: Goddard College, B.A.; attended University of Massachusetts M.F.A. program.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Hull, MA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Poet, writer, trainer, and reading teacher.

WRITINGS:

Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea, Hudson Street Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Excerpts from Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea have appeared in O, the Oprah Magazine and Reader's Digest. Contributor to periodicals, including Georgia Review and Ohio Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Poet and memoirist Catherine Goldhammer was newly divorced and looking for a way to save money when she bought a house badly in need of repairs on the New England coast. Her twelve-year-old daughter resisted the move to such a remote locale, so Goldhammer attempted to make the move easier by supplying her animal-loving daughter with a clutch of chicks. Goldhammer records the results of her new life in the 2006 work, Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea, detailing the daily woes and joys of raising chickens and one's consciousness in a rural setting. The rundown cottage she purchased needed major renovations, and in the course of a year of rebuilding and caring for six chickens, both mother and daughter healed aspects of their lives and relationship. Reviewing Still Life with Chickens for Booklist, Nancy Brent found it a "wonderful, poetic chronicle of chickens and life changes [that] will entrance the reader." Similar praise came from an Internet Bookwatch reviewer, who felt the memoir was not only "captivating," but also "exceptionally well written and entertaining." A Publishers Weekly contributor also had praise for the book, noting that it was "not only amusing but sometimes reads like a self-help manual."