Meet Katie Burke

Award-winning author, San Francisco attorney, journalist, and surfer

Katie is the author of the critically acclaimed Urban Playground: What Kids Say About Living in San Francisco and the forthcoming Sea Change: Women and Nonbinary People Reshaping Surfing Wave by Wave, scheduled for publication in July 2023.

Both of Katie’s books feature people she interviewed, and for two years, Katie also wrote Noe Kids, a monthly column of her interview-based profiles of children for The Noe Valley Voice. Kirkus and Foreword both favorably reviewed Urban Playground, and Foreword named the book a finalist in the Juvenile Nonfiction category of its 2020 Indie Awards.

Urban Playground was also a finalist in the Children’s Nonfiction category of American Book Fest’s 2020 Annual Best Book Awards. In 2020, the book also won the Juvenile Nonfiction category of the National Indie Excellence Awards. Urban Playground was also a finalist in the Children-Social Issues category of the 2020 Readers’ Favorite Awards.

Katie earned her BA in Psychology, minor in Sociology from Connecticut’s Fairfield University; her Master of Counseling degree from Arizona State University; and her law degree from the University of San Francisco.

A practicing attorney in San Francisco, Katie has written judicial and attorney profiles for San Francisco Attorney Magazine. Her other publications include HarperCollins, the L.A. Times, and KQED Perspectives.

Kirkus and Foreword both favorably reviewed Urban Playground, and Foreword named the book a finalist in the Juvenile Nonfiction category of its 2020 Indie Awards.

Urban Playground was also a finalist in the Children’s Nonfiction category of American Book Fest’s 2020 Annual Best Book Awards. In 2020, the book also won the Juvenile Nonfiction category of the National Indie Excellence Awards. Urban Playground was also a finalist in the Children-Social Issues category of the 2020 Readers’ Favorite Awards.