Catherine “Cathy” Madison has always wanted to tell stories. Dabbling in fiction and grabbing opportunities to work on school newspapers and yearbooks at an early age, she pursued a journalism degree at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where she graduated summa cum laude/Phi Beta Kappa. As communications director at the ad agency Carmichael Lynch and executive director of the Advertising Federation of Minnesota, she learned how to tell stories through advertising, marketing, and public relations. Her love for magazine stories led her to serve as editor-in-chief of Utne Reader and senior editor at Adweek and Creativity magazines, as well as founding editor of American Advertising and editor-in-chief of Format Magazine.

As a veteran journalist and freelance writer, she has written feature stories for the Chicago Tribune, Star Tribune, Advertising Age, Obit, The History Channel Magazine, Minnesota Monthly, AARP, and many others. She has won several awards, including the Minnesota Magazine & Publications Association's Award for General Excellence/Consumer Magazines (1997, 1998, 1999, 2000); William A. White Award (Public Interest); Maria Caleel Award (Interpersonal Violence); and  Paul Foss Award for Outstanding Service (Advertising Federation of Minnesota). She has taught editing at the University of Minnesota's College of Continuing Education, continues to tell other people's stories in such venues as Perspectives, the University's Law School alumni magazine, and is glad to finally have the time and opportunity to tell her father's and her own.

Cathy lives most of the year in Minneapolis with photographer/director Rick Dublin and spends winter months in Hollywood whenever possible. She has two daughters (Kristin, a law professor in Boston, and Erika, a broadcast producer in Portland, Oregon) and two grandchildren.

CURRENT WORK, INTERVIEWS, PODCASTS

Our Dangerous Reluctance to Talk Openly About War by Catherine Madison (Star Tribune, June 24, 2015)
From Korea to today, the understandable human need to set aside the pain is wreaking havoc in our society.
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Off the Shelf: Q&A with Catherine Madison by Meleah Maynard (Minnesota Alumni, Winter 2016)
Even as a kid, Catherine Madison (B.A. ’73) knew that her father, Alexander “Doc” Boysen (M.D.  ’49), had a secret. But standing by his bedside as he lay dying in 2002 at age 78, she still didn’t know what it was. After years of begging to hear what happened to him during the Korean War, she and her two brothers had only fragments to go on—Doc had one black ankle that was frozen during the war, had suffered at the hands of a cruel guard called "The Tiger," and he had survived a winter death march on which many men died.
read more here >

Veterans' Voices Month in Minnesota. An interview with Access Minnesota host and Minnesota Broadcasters Association president/CEO Jim du Bois.
listen here>