Catherine Partsch was born in Evanston, Ill., in 1971. After growing up in Nebraska she went to college at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., in spite of the fact that she is not Norwegian, not Lutheran, and was not a music major. She was sports editor of the college newspaper; played intramural rugby, broomball, and soccer; and was a member of the Chamber Orchestra. In her free time she went to class.

After graduating from Olaf in 1993 with a BA in Russian, she moved to Minneapolis and worked as an editor at PR Newswire, an international business wire. She stayed there for a year before getting sick of it. She is now business editor at the St. Petersburg Press.

At any given time, one might find Ms. Partsch writing bad poetry; playing catch and drinking beer; bemoaning the recent baseball strike; trying to play the violin; or rabidly following her favorite teams, the Nebraska Cornhuskers and Chicago White Sox (if and when baseball ever gets back to what it should be doing).