Book Ends: Catherine Marenghi, From Poems At 7 Years Old To 1st Place In The American Academy Of Poets

By Bill Wilson

“I cannot live without books.” ― Thomas Jefferson

Catherine Marenghi seems like one of those persons born to write and love books. Marenghi, an award-winning poet and author, explains, “I was writing poems as soon as I could write, around age seven or eight. I decided to write a magazine at age nine – as a child, I assumed every magazine had a single author – and so I wrote all the text, including poems and stories, and drew illustrations. I even wrote advertisements before stapling it all together. My family was extremely poor. They couldn’t afford to buy me paper for art or writing, so we salvaged business forms, invoices, and discarded letterhead from the town dump. My magazine was drawn up on the backs of these business forms.”

That humble beginning in writing propelled her career into being one of the movers and shakers in our town’s diverse literary community. In a community full of authors, poets, writers, and journalists Marenghi stands out.  She was twice first-place winner of Crossroad Magazine’s annual poetry prize, judged by poets Richard Blanco and Jennifer Clement, and she was twice first-place winner of the Academy of American Poets. A native of Massachusetts, she lives in San Miguel de Allende and in Wareham, MA, and has published five books: Glad Farm: A Memoir (2016), which President Jimmy Carter called “inspiring”; the historic fiction Our Good Name (2022), based on her Italian ancestors; Unfurled: Love Poems (2023); Breaking Bread: Poems (2020); and her latest book Things We Take, Things We Let Go: Poems (2025).

“Managing a demanding career while raising a son as a single mother left little time for the serious literary writing I most wanted to pursue. After retiring in 2016, at the age of 62, I moved to México and devoted myself full-time to writing poetry and fiction,” she notes.

How did she wind up in San Miguel? “After my son graduated from Columbia University in 2013, I was determined to return to my lifelong creative and literary aspirations. I began attending writers’ retreats and conferences while still working full-time at a large software company.” 

Explaining her move to the mountains of México after attending three writers’ conferences here, she said, “Those first three years attending the Writers’ Conference coincided with the most brutal winters in Massachusetts history. Seduced by the glorious weather and beauty of San Miguel and its vibrant creative community, I decided to explore real estate in San Miguel in 2016. I lived most of my life in Massachusetts, one of the most educated and culturally rich states in the States, and yet I never found the kind of literary community and camaraderie that I immediately found in San Miguel. This town is pulsating with creativity – artists, writers, and performers – and they support and enrich each other.”  She adds, “I cannot describe the sense of well-being and happiness I felt when I first came to San Miguel. I felt alive as never before.”

How did her first book evolve? “I started attending writers’ retreats after my son graduated from college in 2013. I spent a week at a writers’ retreat called ‘When Words Count in Vermont’. My intent was to write poetry. But one night, while sharing life stories with fellow writers, one of them said, “I can’t believe you grew up in a one-room house with no indoor plumbing. You ought to write a memoir.” It had never occurred to me before that. So, I started working on Glad Farm, my memoir about growing up dirt poor on a former gladiolus farm. I wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter, telling him that he inspired me to donate proceeds from my book to Habitat for Humanity. To my amazement, he wrote back! And he offered to write an endorsement for my book,” she concludes.

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