Cate Touryan writes fiction and creative nonfiction that reach for the story beyond the story and the beginning beyond “The End.” Her complex, realistic narratives often touch on themes of faith. While she avoids gratuitous violence and profanity, keeping any romance clean, she does not shy away from portraying the grit and beauty of real life, instead writing the truest story she can, infused with heart and humor.
Cate invites you to journey with her into lives both real and imagined, wherein might lie glimpses of your own story beyond the story and an ending redeemed.
Sign up for Cate’s email newsletter to receive occasional writerly news. You can also follow Cate on Facebook, Instagram, and X.
Crafting the story beyond the story . . .
and an ending redeemed
About Cate
Other Writings
“Echoes of Armenia” – Creative Nonfiction
1st Place, Ingrid Reti Literary Award, ARTS Obispo
‘‘To be born Armenian is to become a remnant,” my grandfather once told me. I sat on his shoulders as we walked through the highlands. “What are remnants?” “Autumn flowers. The reds and browns of dead seasons.” He picked a flower, crushed the rusted petals, and held . . .
“A Note in the Margin” – Flash Fiction
2nd Place, WOW Women on Writing
She lives next door, in a house where words vanish, the wind slipping through cracks to steal, sweeping syllables from the cobwebbed corners, shooing phrases out from behind gauzy drapes, stripping thoughts bare. She does not recognize the theft at first. A stumble, a pause. "What . . .
“The Auction” – Creative Nonfiction
1st Place, Golden Quill Writing Contest
Within the pages of newspapers, spun across seemingly disparate facts, unseen threads spool out, span and tangle, weave stories that glisten into sight only rarely. And usually without poetic aesthetic. Take this: two items reported three months apart but occurring on the same . . .
“The Blue Room” – Creative Nonfiction
Honorable Mention, WOW Women on Writing
The crash jolts me from my desk, the thwack and rattle of glass. A bird has collided with the window, perhaps a robin or mourning dove. I scan the balcony, the tree tops, the yard below. On the window, tufts of feathers quiver. I see . . .
“The Caravans of Hayastan” – Flash Fiction
Tribes crashed down the rocky slopes, a landslide of death. “Grandfather!” The boy gripped the gnarled hand. The old voice gurgled, a bayonet. “They cannot kill the soul.” A horse reared, the gendarme snatching the boy’s sister, slinging her to his saddle, and with her, locked . . .
“Time Ran Out When” – Flash Fiction
Time ran out when the night faded and dawn crept into the bedchamber, slicing across the bride’s ashen face. “Take her!” the king shouts, though he need not, the story the same. Today the king will marry again. Tomorrow the bride will die. The only story he knows: a woman’s . . .
“That Place” – Flash Fiction
Or "Why I Probably Shouldn't Be a Children's Author"
Dad said, “Do not look inside that place!” Every day on the way to school down the long boulevard, I walked by that place. The door was always closed. Every day on the way home from school, I walked by that place. The door . . .
“The Final Word” – Flash Fiction
2nd Place as "The Moment of Reckoning," Central Coast Writers Contest, 2016
The child on the doctor’s table lay motionless, her eyes wide, her breaths shallow, not unlike her father now, eighty years later, lying in a hospital bed, seeing again that dimly lit room. Now . . .
“The Children of Ojantag Boarding School Number 8” – Creative Nonfiction
Against the window pounds the first winter storm of northern California, pelting rain, the rush of wind, a sharp crack. Tomorrow’s news will tell of downed power lines, toppled trees, a crumpled radio tower. But tonight, I sit curled in robe . . .
