Utentekathleenmrodgers

2019 MWSA Writer of the Year Finalist

Born and raised in Clovis, New Mexico, Kathleen M. Rodgers is a novelist whose stories and essays have appeared in Family Circle Magazine, Military Times, and in anthologies published by McGraw-Hill, University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, Health Communications, Inc., AMG Publishers, and Press 53. In 2014, Rodgers was named a Distinguished Alumna from Tarrant County College/NE Campus. Three of her aviation poems from the book Because I Fly (McGraw-Hill) were featured in an exhibit at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island, NY. In 2017, the Clovis Municipal School Foundation in Clovis, NM awarded her the Purple Pride Hall of Honor Award under the "Sports and Entertainment" category.

Seven Wings to Glory, Rodgers’ third novel, deals with racism and war and won an Honorable Mention for War & Military in the 2017 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Awards and was shortlisted for the 2017 Somerset Awards. Her second novel, Johnnie Come Lately, has garnered multiple awards, including the 2015 Gold Medal for literary fiction from Military Writers Society of America. The novel has been featured in Family Magazine, Stars & Stripes, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Southern Writers Magazine, and on "The Author's Corner" on Public Radio. The audio edition is narrated by Grammy® Award-winning vocalist and Broadway actress Leslie Ellis. Thorndike Press, the leading large print publisher in the United States, released Johnnie Come Lately and Seven Wings to Glory in hardcover large print editions in early 2018.

Rodgers is also the author of the award-winning novel, The Final Salute, featured in USA Today, The Associated Press, and Military Times.

She and her husband, Tom, a retired USAF fighter pilot/commercial airline pilot, reside in a suburb of North Texas with their two rescue dogs, Denton and Jav. The mother of two grown sons, Thomas and J.P., and grandmother to Reader and Colton, she has recently completed her fourth novel and is at work on her fifth. She is represented by Diane Nine, President of Nine Speakers, Inc.