Katharine Brush was an American

United States

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

 author.

According to her autobiographical collection of works, This Is On Me (1940) , Katharine Brush was born Katharine Ingham in Middletown, Connecticut

Middletown, Connecticut

Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated as a town under its original Indian name, Mattabeseck. It received its present name in 1653. In 1784, the central...

. Brush did not attend college, but instead began working as a columnist for the Boston Traveler. During her career she published multiple short stories in serial magazines like College Humor and Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan (magazine)

Cosmopolitan is an international magazine for women. It was first published in 1886 in the United States as a family magazine, was later transformed into a literary magazine and eventually became a women's magazine in the late 1960s...

; the best known of these were collected in a book titled Night Club (1929). Brush's works are characterized by her involving narrative style and wit.

Brush was born Katharine Ingham in Middletown, Connecticut

Middletown, Connecticut

Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated as a town under its original Indian name, Mattabeseck. It received its present name in 1653. In 1784, the central...

 on August 15, 1902. She first attracted attention in the 1920s with her short stories published under her married name, Katherine Brush. Her story "Him and Her" (published in Collier's Weekly

Collier's Weekly

Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....

 March 16, 1929) was an O. Henry Award

O. Henry Award

The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....

 winner named "Best Short Short" of 1929. She also received honorable mentions for her short stories in 1927 ("Night Club" Harper's Magazine September 1927), 1931 ("Good Wednesday", Harpers), and 1932 ("Football Girl", College Humor

College Humor

College Humor was a popular humor magazine from the 1920s to the 1940s. Published monthly by Collegiate World Publishing, it began in 1920 with reprints from college publications and soon introduced new material, including fiction. Contributors included Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, Groucho Marx,...

, October 1931). Her short short story "The Birthday Party" is frequently taught in literature classes.

Brush's novel Young Man of Manhattan

Young Man of Manhattan

Young Man of Manhattan is a 1930 film made by Paramount Pictures, directed by Monta Bell, and starring Claudette Colbert, Norman Foster, Ginger Rogers and Charles Ruggles...

was named the 9th best-selling novel of 1930 by Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...

and later that year was made into a film starring Claudette Colbert

Claudette Colbert

Claudette Colbert was a French-born American-based actress of stage and film.Born in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures...

, Norman Foster

Norman Foster (director)

Norman Foster was an American film director and actor.Born John Hoeffer in Richmond, Indiana, Foster originally became a cub reporter on a local newspaper in Indiana before going to New York in the hopes of getting a better newspaper job but there were no vacancies...

, and Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century....

. Brush, however, is probably best known today for her subsequent novel Red-Headed Woman

Red-Headed Woman

Red-Headed Woman is a 1932 Pre-Code comedy film, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, based on a novel by Katherine Brush, and with a screenplay by Anita Loos. It was directed by Jack Conway, and stars Jean Harlow as a woman who uses sex to advance her social position...

, which was made into a film in 1932 starring Jean Harlow

Jean Harlow

Jean Harlow was an American film actress and sex symbol of the 1930s. Known as the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde" , Harlow was ranked as one of the greatest movie stars of all time by the American Film Institute...

 which remains a pre-code classic for its racy humor.

Her first husband was Thomas Stewart Brush, son of Louis H. Brush of Brush-Moore Newspapers

Brush-Moore Newspapers

Brush-Moore Newspapers, Inc. was a United States newspaper group based in Ohio which had its origins in 1923 and was sold to Thomson Newspapers in 1967 for $72 million, the largest ever newspaper transaction at that time....

.

Twice married and the mother of one child, Brush died in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 a few months before what would have been her 50th birthday.

Her son, Thomas S. Brush, gave a new library in her name to the Loomis Chaffee School of Windsor, CT, in 1968. The building, designed by architect Kenneth DeMay of Hideo Sasaki

Hideo Sasaki

Sasaki Hideo was an influential American landscape architect.-Biography:Sasaki Hideo was born in Reedley, California, on 25 November 1919. He grew up working on his family's California truck farm, and harvesting crops on Arizona farms. He began his college studies at the University of California,...

's firm Sasaki, Dawson, DeMay Associates (now Sasaki Associates), is still in use today at the school. The building contains a life-size portrait of Katharine Brush looking down at a line of study carrels. A portion of the building was renovated in 2003.

Her short story Birthday Party appeared on the 2005 Advanced Placement English Literature Exam; the story was originally published in The New Yorker's Fiction section in 1946. Brush's Connecticut home was featured on an episode of HGTV

HGTV

HGTV , is a cable-television network operating in the United States and Canada, broadcasting a variety of home and garden improvement, maintenance, renovation, craft and remodeling shows...

's "If Walls could Talk".

Her works include:

• Glitter (1926)
• Little Sins (1927)
• Night Club (1929)
• Young Man of Manhattan (1930)
• Mannequin,
• Red Headed Woman, (1931), which was made into a movie
  Red-Headed Woman
  Red-Headed Woman is a 1932 Pre-Code comedy film, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, based on a novel by Katherine Brush, and with a screenplay by Anita Loos. It was directed by Jack Conway, and stars Jean Harlow as a woman who uses sex to advance her social position...
  
   starring Jean Harlow
  Jean Harlow
  Jean Harlow was an American film actress and sex symbol of the 1930s. Known as the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde" , Harlow was ranked as one of the greatest movie stars of all time by the American Film Institute...
  
  
• Other Women (1933)
• Don't Ever Leave Me (1935)
• This Is on Me (1940) (a mostly non-fiction autobiography with unconventional structure)
• You Go Your Way (1941)
• The Boy from Maine (1942)
• Out of My Mind (1943)
• This Man and This Woman (1944)
• When She Was Bad (1948) (reprinting of 'You Go Your Way')