Memoirs of a Mask Maker

How does a 5-year old girl navigate deep loss after a tragic car accident leaves her motherless? Charting a life-long process of sifting through grief and rediscovering hope, Memoirs of a Mask Maker honors the women who stepped in to help the girl stitch together a beautiful life—a grandmother, a neighbor and a pharmacist in Japan… Years later, when the global pandemic forced Kathryn Graven and everyone else inside, she responded by sewing hundreds of colorful masks for family, friends and complete strangers. She signed each one with a note of encouragement. She discovered that making masks not only called for artistic skills, it tapped all she learned about filling a void and building resilience. Now, as global society faces immeasurable individual and collective grief, these lessons are collected for a new crop of motherless children and those around them. Memoirs of a Mask Maker invites readers to join a new conversation about how we gather our tears and mend the tears.

Author Biography

Kathryn Graven is a mixed media artist and founder of Studio 319 in Boston. She shows her work in monthly open studios and participates in solo and group art events. She studied mixed media painting and abstract art at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the Massachusetts College of Art. During the summer, Kathryn lives and gardens on Great Cranberry Island off the coast of Acadia National Park in Maine. There, she becomes a jar-filling enthusiast. Blessed with a bountiful harvest of organic fruits, vegetables and herbs, she makes delicious jams, irresistible pickles, fermented potions and floral-infused lotions. Kathryn graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in History and a master’s degree in East Asian Studies. Fluent in Japanese, she began her career in Tokyo at the ABC News Bureau. Then, after graduating from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she returned to Tokyo as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. In the US, she reported from New York and Boston, and taught international business reporting and feature writing at Boston University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Kathryn is married to a fellow global adventurer, and is mother to their two grown sons. Kathryn dreams of new adventures when the world opens up again: hot spring hopping in Japan, trekking in New Zealand, swimming in the Indian Ocean, and fabric shopping everywhere. Memoirs of a Mask Maker is her first book.