Caroline Kenna

Past President, Critique Groups Coordinator

Caroline Kane Kenna grew up surrounded by love and words in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Daughter of an English scholar and a newspaper man, she learned the art and the craft of good storytelling listening to her parents at the family dinner table. She has worked as a newspaper reporter, freelance writer and as a public school volunteer. Caroline, husband Mike, and their three sons moved to Huntersville in 2005. Wrangling those boys was one of her most important jobs and now provides great fodder for writing.

 

A poet and an essayist, Caroline is also a collaborator. With four other talented poets from the Lake Norman area, she compiled Above the Fold, an anthology of verses crafted from meditations on fabric. It was published by Main Street Rag in 2014.

 

A former winner of the Member’s Prize for Poetry, she placed second in the adult poetry contest in 2015. Like so many other Charlotte Writers’ Club members, those successes and the encouragement she gets from her CWC peers, keep her writing. Caroline’s poems, and an award-winning photograph, have appeared in Kakalak. She has essays in two anthologies, The Love of Baseball (2017) and Reflections on the New River (2015), both published by McFarland & Co.

 

Caroline graduated from King College (now King University) in Bristol, TN with a B.A. in history and earned a B.A. in journalism from Memphis State University, TN. She has served on the CWC board for more than a decade, as liaison for CWC North, secretary, and vice president. She was club president for three program years (July 2019 to June 2022). Caroline is a jazz lover and an enthusiastic kayaker. When she’s not writing or working in the yard with her husband, you’ll find the two of them at a concert or paddling at a lake. Or with their dog Guiness, camping in their new RV.