A Literary Legacy: This Aggie Weaves Words Into Wonders

Storytelling is second nature for award-winning author Kathi (Cowgill) Appelt ’79. While it is a craft she has honed for decades, it’s also an intuitive act she recognizes is at the heart of us all. “Stories are the most human part of us,” she said. “We are the story animals, the only animals—as far as we know—that keep and tell stories. They are what drive us, keep us sane and bind us together. If we can be open enough to listen to each other’s stories, we’ll find out that we’re not so very different.”

Kathi’s own story began with an action sequence: a Ford Fairlane barreling toward the Fort Bragg Army Base hospital; her dad, a member of the 82nd Airborne, behind the wheel, foot on the accelerator; her mom laboring in the front seat; and Kathi, not content to wait for the delivery room, making her entrance right there in the car.

“I’m not very good at waiting even now,” she chuckled as she related her origin story.

The First Chapter

One of Kathi’s earliest literary experiences was a section of blank wall in the garage that she was allowed to write on at her childhood home in Houston. She scribbled and drew, her works going higher up the wall and becoming more advanced as she grew. “Once I started actually writing, I no longer needed the wall. But I still think of it as the place where my earliest work took place. It was like my first journal, a record of my feelings and experiences,” she said.
 

As a girl, Kathi was “allowed to read anything I could get my hands on,” she said, but she loved horse books best of all. She read everything by Marguerite Henry, as well as classics like “Smoky the Cowhorse” by Will James. As a teenager, her family owned two horses, and her cowgirl dreams became a reality. This equestrian obsession eventually led her to Texas A&M University, where she intended to become a veterinarian.
 

First-year chemistry scuttled that ambition, but an English class that semester began a new chapter. On a huge campus, Kathi found a home and a family in the English and theater program. There, she discovered a passion for storytelling on the page and stage. She also met her husband, Ken Appelt, when he was working as a sound engineer in Rudder Auditorium and she was a stagehand. “We met at Texas A&M, even though we grew up not too far apart from each other in Houston,” she said. Now, nearly 50 years later, “he’s still my Prince Charming.”

Launching a Literary Journey

The road to earning her Aggie Ring was a challenging quest. Kathi was paying for college herself, which meant she would regularly take a semester or two off from classes in order to work and save.
 

After her freshman year, she went back to Houston and took courses in shorthand and dictation while working as a secretary. That experience paid off: When she returned to campus a year later, she was a better student with those skills. She took a job on campus as a typist, worked in the theater department and occasionally waited tables to make ends meet. It took seven years of toil, but she graduated in 1979—becoming the first person in her family to earn a college degree. She and Ken married that same year.