A Passion for Storytelling
Hi, I’m Kathy. Thanks for clicking by.
I’m a former newspaper and freelance photographer turned writer, currently revising my memoir. It’s a story about what happens when love, HIV, and betrayal collide.
The narrative revolves around one of the nation’s deadliest pharmaceutical scandals of the twentieth century – the HIV and hepatitis infections of tens of thousands of people from FDA-approved blood products. If you haven’t heard the story, you are not alone. I am forever informing doctors and medical students on what happened. But that’s a tale for another day. Perhaps an essay.
After six years of writing (four not knowing what I was doing, shhh!), I’m close to typing those two glorious words: The End.
To help others avoid making the mounds of mistakes that trail behind me, I now volunteer my time teaching what I have learned.
If you are interested in following my path to publication and assorted stories along the way, please sign up for my free Substack newsletter – On Writing and Thriving After 50. (young folks invited!)
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
– Maya Angelou
Previously published book: Dying in Vein
Photographs by Kathy MacKay co-written with Stacy Milbouer
"This book is a testament to the great strength and terrible suffering of so many innocent hemophiliacs victimized by the outrageous conduct that caused so many to be unfairly infected with HIV and HCV. Your work is extraordinarily powerful and moving.”
– Fabrice N. Vincent, Attorney, San Francisco, CA
With a foreword by Donald P. Francis, MD, DSc,
former Asst. Director of the Division of Viral Diseases at the CDC
Kathy MacKay With Dr. Francis