Catherine Lanser is a writer from Madison, Wis. who grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan. She ate so much salmon as a child, if you cut into her you would find flaky flesh that you could easily lift away with a salad fork.

She has lived in the Midwest her whole life and writes essays and narrative nonfiction about her life and growing up as the baby of a family of nine children. She is looking for a home for her first full-length memoir about how she found her place in her family, told through the lens of her brain tumor and her father’s stroke.