Kathleen Rooney

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. Her most recent novels include the national best-seller Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (St. Martin's Press 2017), Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey (Penguin, 2020), and From Dust to Stardust (Lake Union, 2023). Her latest poetry collection Where Are the Snows (2022) won the XJ Kennedy Prize from Texas Review Press. Leaf Town Forever, a picture book co-written with her sister Beth Rooney, is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press in Fall 2025. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay. Follow her at @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social and learn more about her other books at kathleenrooney.com ​