When she isn’t editing or teaching technical writing, Cate Touryan writes short fiction, creative nonfiction, and novels. Her debut YA novel, Turning Toward Eden, is slated for a 2025 spring release. Cate’s work has won second place and an honorable mention in past Women on Writing contests. Her recent creative nonfiction piece, published in Under the Sun, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as for inclusion in The Best American Essays, 2025. You can read her essay here.
Cate lives on California’s foggy but beautiful central coast with her husband, the sweet spirit of her Yorkie, and a rafter of turkeys—as in both a whole bunch of them and in the rafters.
WOW: Congratulations on being a runner up in the Q1 2025 Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest for Beyond the Safari Sunset. The imagery is so rich I felt like I was watching a slideshow, not reading. Any insights on how you make your writing so incredibly descriptive?
CATE: That’s a lovely compliment, thank you. As a reader, I most admire that writing which perfectly melds form, function, and fabric such that the narrative transcends the telling and becomes a work of art in itself, an astonishment. I’m not there yet, more miss than hit, but continue to work toward a mastery of craft. To render physical setting well, I rely on conventional advice: infuse scenes with relevant sensory detail, tease out nuanced meaning through juxtaposition, backlight the symbolic, and much more.
But to render description immersive—that’s my ultimate goal, requiring me to reach beyond the physical, intellectual, and symbolic characteristics of a place. To harness the power of setting demands that I see the landscape, for example, as an indispensable thread in the story, not a character so much as a revelatory shading or texturizing. Even that—the descriptive as immersive—has a greater goal: to make my story yours, the distinction between us lost as we converge into one shared moment.
WOW: What made you decide to submit this piece to the contest?
CATE: There’s something about putting a pet down that, as if not heartrending enough, brings mortality front and center, speaking to the loss of all things. We can, as the story illustrates, try to hem in those we love, prolong their wilted lives, concoct workarounds, tether them with unbreakable love, yet nothing can stave off the inevitable. It may be a fact of life that all things eventually perish, will be lost, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t driven by some fierce force to hold on. Death is anathema to us; though of perishable bodies, we have been set with eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Trying to come to terms with the loss of Wee Willie Winkie meant revisiting the permeating sorrows of this life. And as writers do, I wrestled with those sorrows in story, refusing to let loss have the last word and perhaps doing the one thing we can do: make beauty from ashes. It just so happened that a last-call email from WOW provided the impetus I needed to put fingers to keyboard.
WOW: Yes, I agree that a looming deadline can give us the extra nudge to write. Do you frequently enter writing contests?
CATE: I don’t, entering maybe a half-dozen essays for WOW over the years, but I do have a
wonderful story to tell with a shoutout to two tremendously kind and encouraging editors, Angela Mackintosh and Martha Highers.
When a CNF essay I submitted to WOW last year made it to the finals but no farther, I reached out to a WOW editor to ask if the topic was too political for the contest. She thought not and pointed me to the literary journal
Under the Sun, saying its editor-in-chief had recently written her own piece on the same topic. Even though my entry was too short at 1,000 words for their preferred style, what would it hurt? The editor-in-chief liked it enough to ask me to expand it. After nine months of collaborative work, my now 3,000-word essay was published and subsequently nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as for a 2025 Best American Essays selection. As if that wasn’t honor enough, I was asked to be a reader for
Under the Sun and am now working with authors we’d like to publish, paying it forward as it were. I am loving the behind-the-scenes reading and editing and can’t speak highly enough of the terrific team rooting for every submission.
Not making it past the finals in the WOW contest was a blessing in disguise. There is reward ahead for those who persevere.
WOW: Pushcart Prize and American Essay! That is an incredible story. And a wonderful example of how we all, in our turn, lift our fellow writers up. On your website, you write that you reach for "....the beginning beyond The End." Can you share what that means to you?
CATE: Simply explained, I write stories, fictional and otherwise, where real life meets real faith.
While we cannot see beyond this temporal life—and indeed, many believe there is nothing to see—I believe we catch glimpses of another story that awaits us after “the end,” a story of redemption and the renewal of all things. Or as the apostle Paul put it far more eloquently, “the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” Christianity provides, if not the easiest, safest, or most popular life, the only one that offers both meaning to our own stories and the promise of a story beyond our own. I write to capture glimpses of that which lies beyond our temporal vision, to offer that which has brought my life both purpose and hope.
WOW: What an inspirational look at your writing process. So, what's your next big writing project?
CATE: I’m excited to be launching my debut historical YA novel, Turning Toward Eden, along with the audiobook in May. It’s a crossover in many ways—historical, mystery, coming-of-age, small town, YA/women’s, not fitting neatly into any particular genre, but with appeal to those who enjoy a good story with heart. I have a middle grade novel in the works as well as more creative nonfiction, perhaps my favorite format.
WOW: You are busy! What is your upcoming novel about?
CATE: When chasing another is easier than facing yourself. It’s 1971. The Cold War has cast a chill over the hot summer of California’s central coast. Caught in her parents’ own cold war, 14-year-old Eden is strapped with caring for her severely disabled brother until the arrival of a mysterious Russian immigrant unleashes a rash of escalating crimes. Rumors swirl: the “commie” is to blame . . . and Eden is her accomplice. Determined to prove her innocence, Eden embarks on a reckless game of chase—even if it means risking her brother’s life. Stumbling upon the girl’s secret, she unearths her own. But will it be too late to save her brother?
To read the short story prequel, set in 1910, please visit
my website and subscribe to my quarterly newsletter.
WOW: I 'm signing up today because I can't resist a sneak peek inside a new world.
CATE: Thank you for inviting me to share about my creative process and works. It’s an honor!
