Katie Venit has been writing since the fifth grade when she and her friends passed around a composition notebook in which they took turns making up. But she didn’t know she wanted to be a writer for kids (the best of all audiences, as it turns out) until her son asked her to write a book about the solar system.

Katie has held quite a few jobs, from working at a barbeque catering company in Maryland to waiting tables at a beach in Delaware to teaching English in Japan. Now she lives in Wisconsin and works as an instructional designer helping college instructors put their courses online.

As a professional writer, Katie writes picture books and middle grade graphic novels, including Forts and Cassini’s Mission. Her nonfiction essays have appeared in Literary Mama and Wisconsin Public Radio’s Wisconsin Life.

Katie goes for long walks with her dog and bakes too many macarons for her family to eat by themselves. She sits on the advisory board of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild and regularly fills up two XL Lands’ End bags on her weekly trips to the library.