Catherine (Clemens) Sevenau

Catherine Sevenau, an irreverent humorist and an astute storyteller, tells her stories with transparency and grace. Writing is a way to be seen and heard, to have something useful to say, and the courage to say it. Her second book, QUEEN BEE, was released in January of 2016.

QUEEN BEE, Reflections on Life and Other Rude Awakenings, is a compilation of short pieces composed over the years. Some are from her blog, many appear on Facebook, others are recently written. A few are in memory of those who have passed. There is a chattering of exchanges with her grandkidlets. She chronicles stories of fools, friends, and family, and has spent years disturbing the dead. She believes she'll heal her soul by rounding them up and telling their tales, creating a legacy for them, and for her.

PASSAGES FROM BEHIND THESE DOORS, A Family Memoir, Catherine's first book, is a kaleidoscope of frank, funny, and tender tales about sin and prayer, good intentions and unattended sorrows, and about finding our way back home. It is a portrait of a woman’s journey to find her place in the family and to understand her troubled mother. With clarity and perspective, Sevenau embraces the events of her early years and comes to appreciate what transpired were gifts in disguise: that what occurred happened for her, not to her. Transforming a bewildering and fractured childhood into a life well lived, she's found her way back home. Her twenty passages from Behind These Doors are a poignant and captivating taste of her first book.

Catherine has also compiled five volumes on her family genealogy, works until wee hours of the morning managing nearly 7,000 pages for ancestors and kin on Find A Grave, co-hosts Random Acts, a monthly open mic at Readers’ Books, is a speaker and blogger, and a longtime Owner/Broker/Realtor® at CENTURY 21 Wine Country in the Sonoma Valley, an hour north of San Francisco.