ABOUT CATHY GRABER
I was born on May 16, 1970, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and lived there until I was three years old when my family moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, known as Amish country.
In 1988, after graduating from Manheim Township High School, I headed to the deep south for college at Clemson University in South Carolina, which gave me a good bit of culture shock.
I spent one semester in 1992 at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla, commonly known as UDLAP, a Mexican private university located in San Andrés Cholula, near Puebla. In 1993, I received a B.A. in Spanish and Global Marketing from Clemson University.
After graduating, I spent six months in Charleston, South Carolina waitressing and interning at the South Carolina World Trade Center. Then, in January 1994, I embarked on a six-month backpacking adventure through Europe with a friend. Armed with a Let’s Go Europe guidebook and a Eurorail pass, we traveled to sixteen countries without a set plan, slept in hostels, and let a flip of a coin determine our next destination.
After returning from Europe with no clear career path, I spent two years in Miami where I worked as an assistant in a law office and then as a sales assistant at a German machine-bearing company. But I couldn't shake my desire to travel, so I dusted off my backpack once again and embarked on a three-month trip to Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel.
In 1995, I moved to Ibiza, Spain, where I lived and worked at a sunset café for over a year before returning to the U.S., settling in Los Angeles.
In L.A., I began my career in the entertainment industry as a marketing assistant at the Canadian film company Alliance, which later merged to become Alliance Atlantis. In 2000, I started as a junior publicist at Sony Pictures Entertainment in the international film division, where I worked for 15 years, climbing the ranks to become senior vice-president of my department. However, in late 2015, I decided to leave to focus on my family and writing.
With my unique publicity job, I worked on a wide range of films across various divisions within Sony such as Sony Pictures Classics, Screen Gems, Columbia TriStar, and the local language production units in China, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Mexico, as well as the acquisition titles. Some of my most memorable publicity campaigns include: Errol Morris’s The Fog of War; Bennett Miller’s Capote; Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained; Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil franchise; and Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle.
I've traveled to over 40 countries for both work and pleasure, which has not only given me an understanding of different cultures but has also been healing for my soul, ultimately changing the course of my life.
Through evening novel writing classes at UCLA Extension, I wrote the first draft of Just Wrong in 2006-2007. However, with a full-time job in film publicity at a major studio and becoming a mother in 2009, I set aside writing to focus on my career and family. Now, as my daughters are getting older, I have returned to writing.
I plan to publish my first novel, Just Wrong, and I’m currently working on its sequel, Almost Right.