Cathy Hailey

Cathy Hailey taught English and Creative Writing in Prince William County, VA, Schools (PWCS) for forty years, much of that time as part of the Center for the Fine and Performing Arts Creative Writing Concentration. She sponsored the award-winning Eddas literary/art magazine for thirty-three years, her students earning four Virginia High School League (VHSL) Savedge Awards for sustained excellence. Hailey taught magazine publication and creative writing classes at VHSL workshops and judged for their contests. As an adjunct and as part of Dual Enrollment, she taught English Composition courses for Northern Virginia Community College. She has been a Teacher/Consultant for the Northern Virginia Writing Project (NVWP) since 1981 and later co-directed with a focus on the Student Summer Institute and Young Writers Workshops. Hailey graduated from Duke University with an A.B (Artium Baccalaureus) in English and earned an MA in English, with a concentration in Professional Writing and Editing, from George Mason University. In 2010, she won the Mark Farrington Personal Writing Award, which afforded her the opportunity to attend the Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival; she has attended ever since. In 2014, Hailey was selected by Prince William Living as one of Prince William County’s Influential Women, and in 2016, she was nominated for a Kathleen K. Seefeldt Award for Art Excellence in the category of Outstanding Arts Educator.

After retiring from full-time teaching, Hailey participates in the PWCS Retirement Opportunity Program to support student writing initiatives in addition to her work with Teaching Creative Writing for the JHU online MA in Teaching Writing Program. Hailey is a poet who coordinates the Poetry-in-the-Schools initiative and assists in northern region programming for the Poetry Society of Virginia (PSV). As a member of the Poet Laureate Circle, she co-coordinates In the Company of Laureates, a biennial reading of poets laureate held in Prince William County. Her writing has been published in the 2016 Poetry Virginia Review, The Journal of the Virginia Writing Project, What Peaches & What Penumbras: An Anthology of Grocery Lists, and in the Springtime in Winter and Peace and Identity anthologies created through PSV collaborations with visual artists and musicians.