Bio

Cathy Cultice Lentes is a poet, essayist, and children’s writer. She has been writing and publishing since the age of eight when her first poem appeared in a small-town Ohio newspaper. She was born in Xenia and grew up near Springfield. Since 1987, she has lived and worked in the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio, a few winding miles from the Ohio River, halfway between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.

Lentes’ work appears in various literary journals, magazines, and anthologies including I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices ( Sheila-Na-Gig, Inc., 2022), Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio (Ohio University Press, 2015) and Quarried: Three Decades of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel (Dos Madres Press, 2015). Lentes served as a juror for the 2015-2016 reading series of the Women of Appalachia–Women Speak Project and has been a longtime participant. In 2003, community and state officials recognized her as a Woman Making a Difference in the Arts. Lentes is a 2013 graduate of the Solstice MFA Program, formerly of Pine Manor College and the author of the poetry chapbook, Getting the Mail (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her newest book, Stonger When We Touch, co-authored with poet Wendy McVicker, was released by The Orchard Street Press in November, 2023.