Cat Pleska is an award-winning author and educator. She has two published memoirs, Riding on Comets, WVUP, 2015 and My Life in Water, Uncollected Press, 2024. Her memoir and essays have appeared in many literary magazines and she has edited four collections. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart prize twice. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher, and she teaches at Marshall University in the English Department and the Graduate Humanities program. Over the years Pleska has been a book reviewer, a radio essayist with 35 essays she wrote and voiced for West Virginia Public Radio and often performs as a storyteller throughout the region. She has served as an oral historian for oral history projects. Previously, she was selected as a creative nonfiction writing mentor for AWP and for the WV Creative Network working as a literary scholar with two state writers writing memoir. Most recently, she has served as a mentor to a Berea student, who is an apprentice in the Folklife program, in the heritage skill of storytelling. Since 2013, she has served as the president and editor-in-chief of Mountain State Press.
