Lucina Kathmann (born 28 April 1942) is an American writer and activist. Her multilingual books, essays, [1]and short stories have been published internationally. She has been an active member of PEN International, a worldwide association of writers fighting for freedom of expression, since 1986[2]
And as a board member of the Chicago Network, she represents PEN International at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.[3]She is former chair of the Women Writers Committee of PEN International.[4]
Kathmann was born to a pair of physicians. Her father, Victor N.Tompkins, was a pathologist specializing in public health[5] while her mother, Ethel Cermak Tompkins, a medical school professor and an early specialist in psychosomatic medicine of children[6]
Kathmann earned her BA in philosophy from Harvard University in 1964 and an MA from Northwestern University in 1967. She taught philosophy at Barat College [7] for a few years.
Kathmann’s writing is mainly about women, their struggles and accomplishments, their suppression and their extraordinary contributions to freedom and to literature. In 1989, her novel, The Adventures of the Magnificent Kong and Brawny Mouse was published by Liberty Press[8] and later came out on special tapes for the blind.
Kathmann and Kuschinski enrolled in a literary workshop in 1991, conducted by Daniel Sada, a highly regarded and influential writer, at the INBA in San Miguel de Allende. Moving forward, she wrote a lot of her own pieces in English and Spanish. Throughout the nineties, Kathmann published essays, poetry, translations and children’s stories in a variety of magazines, anthologies, and other venues."[9] A bilingual anthology of her children’s stories, Payshapes and the Bear, was published in 1999, [10] which was recognized as a finalist in the International Book Awards, sponsored by USA Book News. [11] A Forest of Mathematics, was featured in the “What’s New?” section of the Guadalajara International Book Fair, 2011.
Kathmann’s central life work has been her involvement with PEN International, beginning in 1986.[21] She has written and spoken extensively about women’s rights and women’s problems globally, especially about the largely uninvestigated disappearances and femicides of Ciudad Juarez[22]
She now acts as International Vice president Emerita of PEN International[23] and has filled various leadership positions in her local chapter, the PEN Centre in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.[24]