Katherine McNamara is a writer, editor, and digital publisher in Charlottesville, Virginia. She grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania.[1] While pursuing a Ph.D. in History at Cornell, she went to Paris on a French-government research fellowship, researching the thought of the French ethnologue Marcel Mauss. From Paris she moved to Alaska, where she lived and wrote for many years;[1] she developed an interest in Native languages and linguistics that continues to this day.[2] She moved to New York in the late 1980s, and in 1989 began writing her 2001 book, Narrow Road to the Deep North: A Journey into the Interior of Alaska.[1] After her husband's death in 1994, she moved to Charlottesville, and soon after began her digital publication Archipelago.[1] Today she is publisher and editor of Artist's Proof Editions.