Katherine Harbour was born in Albany, NY (upstate NY is where Thorn Jack takes place) and now lives in Sarasota, FL. She briefly attended college in Minneapolis, Minnesota, before attempting life as a painter (the artsy kind). She has been writing since she was seventeen and juggling a few jobs while doing it. She wrote Thorn Jack when she was seventeen—as well as many, many other things over the years—and she took it out of the trunk (a literal trunk) two years ago, dusted it off, and began revising it, before submitting it to Harper Voyager’s open call last year.
Thorn Jack by Katherine Harbour
For us readers of a certain age, “Tam Lin” and “college” in the same sentence are going to remind us of Pamela Dean’s quirky retelling. But other than profuse quoting of poetry, Dean’s Tam Lin and Katherine Harbour’s Thorn Jack are not much alike and don’t really invite comparisons. You might also think of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight a time or two, as a few of the story’s bones are similar, but I never once felt like I was reading a Twilight copy while reading Thorn Jack — which goes to show you tropes need not be poison if woven into a good tale. What Thorn Jack reminded me of, more than an... Read More
