Biography

Katharine Ingham was born on 15 August, 1902 at Middletown, Connecticut, the daughter of Charles Samuel (1867-1949) and Clara Louise Northup Ingham (1874-1946). Her father was for 23 years the headmaster at Governor Dummer Academy, an all-boys school in South Byfield, Massachusetts. Later he would teach at Yale University and serve five terms in the Connecticut State Legislature. Growing up in South Byfield, Katherine was the only girl student aloud to attend her father's school. Later she attended Centenary Collegiate Institute, a co-educational, preparatory school in Hackettstown, New Jersey. Katherine did not go on to college, but instead began working at the age of eighteen as an entertainment journalist for the Boston Traveler.

It was around this time that she married Thomas Stewart Brush (1890-1938), the son of a wealthy newspaper publisher in Ohio. It was after Katharine and her husband moved to Liverpool, Ohio, that she began writing to ease her boredom. In 1927 her short story "Night Club" (Harper's Magazine) received an O. Henry Award honorable mention and two years later "Him and Her" (Collier's Weekly 16 March) was given the O. Henry "Best Short Short" Award of 1929.

Katharine's marriage ended amicably in 1929 over geography. She wanted to live in New York and he needed to stay in Ohio because of the family publishing business. Later that year she married Hubert Charles Winans, a New York banker who had made a fortune trading Midwest wheat for Brazilian coffee. At first they referred to their marriage as a "trial" and for a time maintained separate residences. The couple would later divorce after nearly twelve years of marriage.

During her career she published numerous short stories that were serialized in magazines like Harper's, College Humor and Cosmopolitan; some of the more popular were assembled in her book "Night Club" (1929). Her short stories "Good Wednesday", "Football Girl" and "The Birthday Party" are among her best remembered. Many of Katherine's works were usually set in the post First World War period and were typified by her ability to tell a good story with humor.

Of her books, "Young Man of Manhattan" (1930) and "Red Headed Woman" (1931) were by far the most successful. Katherine's other books include: "Glitter" (1926), "Little Sins" (1927), "Other Women" (1933) "Don't Ever Leave Me" (1935), "This Is On Me" (1940), "You Go Your Way" (1941), "The Boy from Maine" (1942), "Out of My Mind" (1943), "This Man and this Woman" (1944) and "When She was Bad" (1948).

Katharine Brush died after an illness of several months on 10 June, 1952, at St. Luke's Hospital in New York. The illness had prevented Katharine from finishing her last novel, "Lover Come Back", which was intended to be published that fall. She was survived by her son, publisher Thomas Stewart Brush Jr., who at the time his death in 1992, had been a managing director of the Metropolitan Opera Association since 1978.
- IMDb mini biography by: John F. Barlow