Kathleen DeMarco Van Cleve is a novelist, screenwriter, film producer and teacher. She most recently co-wrote, with Erica Armstrong Dunbar, the Young Readers edition of the 2017 National Book-nominated Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Dunbar for Simon & Schuster. A School Library Journal "Best Nonfiction Book of 2019", it received starred reviews from Kirkus and the Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books. She is working with producer/writer/director, Aline Brosh McKenna, on a female-driven screenplay and with novelist Wesley Stace on a film adaptation of his novel Charles Jessold: Considered as a Murderer and her own young adult book series, Hurricane Ike. Her middle grade novel, Drizzle, received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and The Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, and won the Pennsylvania state students’ choice award for best middle-grade novel. For many years, she was the creative partner of actor and writer John Leguizamo, during which time she produced the films Joe the King, (winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival), Piñero, (a Miramax release starring Benjamin Bratt) and Undefeated (an HBO film starring Leguizamo) as well as worked with Steven Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election, Downsizing) and Frank Pugliese (showrunner, House of Cards). Her other novels are Cranberry Queen (optioned by Miramax Films) and The Difference Between You and Me. She graduated with a dual degree from the Wharton School and the College of Arts & Sciences and lives with her husband and two sons in Philadelphia.
