About

Cathy Wood is a freelance writer and columnist focusing on Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. She also is the marketing director for the Tennessee Valley Art Association, which oversees the Tennessee Valley Museum of Art, in Tuscumbia, Ala., and the Ritz Theatre, in Sheffield, Ala., and a writing coach/adjunct faculty member at the University of North Alabama in Florence, Ala. For more than 10 years she was a features writer and columnist for the TimesDaily, in Florence, Ala., after starting there in 1997 as an advertorial writer and then as a clerk. Her writing appeared in many newspapers across the country through the New York Times Regional Newspapers Group. She specializes in style, books, food, decorating, shopping, entertaining, history, local personalities and arts. Her weekly column for the TimesDaily was about her often-chaotic but never-boring  life and the shenanigans (does anybody use that word anymore?) of her two 20-something daughters, four cats, two dazzlingly cute grandsons and her husband of seven years, a sports editor who is kind and well-meaning but often befuddled about such things as women’s shoes and which day to take out the garbage. She continues that column at her blog, Coffee with Cathy, and writes food stories for the TimesDaily, a fashion column for Shoals Woman magazine and book reviews and fashion columns for the Crossroads Woman magazine in Corinth, Miss. In addition, she writes online content for design and marketing companies and publicity materials for non-profits. In hopes of becoming rich and famous, she’s dipped her (monthly pedicured) toes into the blogging world. She’s still hoping — but having a blast in the meantime. She’s a 1979 graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tenn., where she was editor of the school newspaper, Sidelines. She also worked at the Manchester Times, in Manchester, Tenn., and the Daily-Post Athenian, in Athens, Tenn. Email cathylwood@gmail.com

–  Edited by John Lewis Pitts