A native Londoner, Katherine Preston was born in 1984 to an English mother and an American father. At the age of seven she inexplicably lost her previously ‘normal’ voice and faced the terror and hopelessness of communicating with the world through a stutter. Having graduated from Durham University with a BA in History she was working as a financial writer when the idea for Almost Normal took hold. At the age of twenty-four she left her home and career in London and moved to America to conduct research. She slept on strangers' sofas, drove across the country and interviewed over a hundred different stutterers, therapists and researchers to finally face her fear of stuttering. Her first book, Almost Normal, chronicles her journey into finding self-acceptance. Today Katherine is working as a freelance writer, public speaker and as the the Creative Director of a young cell phone recycling start-up called ExchangeMyPhone. "What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature." -W. Somerset Maugham