Katherine Spitz

For 16 years, Katherine Spitz was a prize winning feature writer for a Knight Ridder newspaper. She first wrote as the paper's restaurant critic, then as a general feature writer and finally, as a medical writer on aging issues and mental health.

Her articles on health ran on the Knight-Ridder newswire and were reprinted in newspapers throughout the country. As a reporter, Ms. Spitz received writing awards from Ohio Associated Press, the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists, the Association of Black Journalists and the University of Akron's Institute of Life-Span Development and Gerontology. She also was a 1991 Pulitzer Prize nominee for a magazine article she wrote on a young father's hospice experience.

Ms. Spitz earned her bachelor's degree in Psychology and English from Tufts University and a master's degree in community counseling. After spending years in a newsroom, she now raises schoolage children, writes free lance and leads her daughter's Brownie Girl Scout troop. For her limited "Me Time," she loves to read, do crafts, travel with her family, invent recipes and solve problems, both big and small.