Catherine served as the Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2021-2025 and is the author of four books of poems: Danger Days, The Tornado Is the World, The Girls of Peculiar, and Famous Last Words, all from Saturnalia Books. An essay collection, Foxes for Everybody (Northwestern University Press) and a poetry collection, Dear Beast (Saturnalia) are forthcoming in 2026.

Catherine’s work has been published widely, including in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Sun, and the 2019 and 2021 Pushcart Prize anthologies. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the Mississippi Arts Commission.

Catherine earned her B.A. from Susquehanna University, her M.F.A. from the Ohio State University, and her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri before moving to Mississippi to join the faculty at Mississippi State University. From 2007-2024, she was professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State. She recently moved with her family back to her home state of Delaware, where she continues to write, teach, and spend as much time outside as possible.