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Kate Gies

Biography

Kate Gies

Kate Gies is a writer and educator living in Toronto. She teaches creative nonfiction and expressive arts at George Brown College. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in The Malahat Review, The Humber Literary Review, Hobart, Minola Review and The Conium Review. She was a finalist for the CBC Nonfiction Prize, and her essay “Foreign Bodies” (excerpted from IT MUST BE BEAUTIFUL TO BE FINISHED) will be included in the forthcoming Best Canadian Essays anthology from Biblioasis.

Kate Gies

Books by Kate Gies

It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body
by Kate Gies - Memoir, Nonfiction

When Kate Gies was four years old, a plastic surgeon pressed a synthetic ear to the right side of her head and pulled out a mirror. He told her he could make her “whole” --- could make her “right” --- and she believed him. From the age of four to 13, she underwent 14 surgeries, including skin and bone grafts, to craft the appearance of an outer ear. Many of the surgeries failed, leaving permanent damage to her body. In short, lyrical vignettes, Kate writes about how her “disfigured” body was scrutinized, pathologized and even weaponized. She describes the physical and psychic trauma of medical intervention and its effects on her sense of self, first as a child needing to be fixed and, later, as a teenager and adult navigating the complex expectations and dangers of being a woman.