Kathleen Finneran is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, born in St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

 on December 3, 1957. She wrote the book-length family memoir The Tender Land (Houghton-Mifflin, 2000). Finneran received a Whiting Writers' Award

Whiting Writers' Award

The Whiting Writers' Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. The award is sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and has been presented since 1985. As of 2007, winners receive US $50,000.-External links:**...

 in 2001 and a Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

 in 2003.

She teaches at Washington University and is a guest professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where she leads workshops on memoir and personal essay.

On May 17, 2010, Kathleen Finneran awarded Christopher Bachmann and Tony Minnick from St. Louis University High School, an award for exemplary and outstanding literary work.