BIOGRAPHY
Kathleen Watt sang principal roles with Boston Lyric Opera, Utah Opera Company, Springfield Regional Opera, and others, and in the Extra Chorus of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, before her singing career was summarily ended by osteogenic sarcoma (bone cancer) in her face.
Since retiring from performing, she has written features, profiles, and essays on performing arts and cultural issues. As a writer and cancer survivor Kathleen has collaborated with doctors and artists on a range of projects, including an appearance in a BBC documentary about facial disfigurement.
Formerly an assistant art director in publishing, Kathleen attended R.I. School of Design, Brown University, and Brigham Young University (earning a double BFA in Art and Music) with postgraduate studies in opera performance at Boston University. Kathleen is a recent recipient of the Columbia University Certificate in Narrative Medicine.
Kathleen now writes from a windswept hay farm in the Catskill Mountains of New York, where she resides with her partner, seven chickens, three dogs, and, on occasion, her two grown stepchildren.
SHORT BIO
Once a painter from New England, Kathleen became a New York opera singer. Bone cancer in her face transformed her into a writer. REARRANGED is her first book.
BOOK DESCRIPTION
REARRANGED, An Opera Singer’s Facial Cancer and Life Transposed, by Kathleen Watt, follows her plunge from the operatic stage into the disorderly netherworld of hospital life, on through the devastation of cancer, and out the other side.
After bone cancer in her cheek ended her career as an opera singer, she found herself face to face with mortality, disfigurement, the meanings and uses of beauty—and a lot of left over pieces. Rescued by a brutal alchemy of lethal toxins, titanium screws, and infinite kindness, she found the life she returned to dramatically transposed.
In lyrical prose, with musical allusions, clinical references, and just enough comic relief, REARRANGED describes letting go to hold on, putting old pieces to new uses, and the unlikely arrangements that make all the pieces fit.
☙☙☙
With a foreword by dramaturg Cori Ellison, REARRANGED is not just a heart-wrenching medical odyssey, but ultimately a joyous personal journey of transformation.
☙☙☙
Kirkus Reviews calls REARRANGED “a finely textured and courageous literary memoir that is inspirational, and at times, darkly amusing.”