Katherine Quintana Ranck | Biography

Narrative description is Katherine Quintana Ranck's greatest asset as a writer. Her works powerfully preserve a fast-disappearing traditional life-style once typical in the villages of rural New Mexico.

The last of eleven children, she was born Katherine Quintana on 4 October 1942 in Santa Fe to Ramón Trujillo Quintana and Lebradita Romero Quintana. Her maternal grandmother, Sofia Madrid Romero, was the inspiration for Ranck's first published work, Portrait of Doña Elena (1982). As a young girl, Ranck was an avid reader, pulling books at random from library shelves and thus discovering the classics by accident. Her years at Leah Harvey Junior High School in Santa Fe were vital in her formation as a writer, due to the influence and encouragement of eighth-grade teacher William Gill, who introduced Ranck to the formal study of literature and critiqued her first manuscript. Immediately after graduating from high school at age seventeen, she married James Phillip Ranck in 1960. In 1968 they moved to the San Diego area and now reside in National City, California. In 1970 James Ranck suffered a massive coronary. Subsequent medical expenses and an uncertain financial future sent his wife job hunting, with bilingualism as her only marketable skill. Working at various medical-related clerical jobs, she was willing to accept the least popular nighttime schedules, because these allowed her to be home with her two children in the daytime, when she was needed the most. Ranck enrolled at Southwestern College in nearby Chula Vista, California, to upgrade her job skills, earning an associate degree in child development in 1978. She is currently director of child development programs for the National City Public Schools and is pursuing a graduate degree at National University in San Diego. The Rancks have two adult children, Kimberly and Lance, and a granddaughter, Kimberly Marie. Katherine Quintana Ranck's favorite pastimes include visiting small galleries that display the arts of the Southwest and reading literary works depicting the beauty of rural New Mexico and its peoples.

Ranck's works are psychologically oriented whether narrated in the first or third person. Her fine descriptions are colored by the emotional involvement of the narrator and invite the sensory participation of the reader. Ranck's poetic prose tends to charm the reader into continuing with the work despite the lack of action, movement, or intricate story line.

Portrait of Doña Elena evolved from a creative-writing class Ranck took at Southwestern College under the guidance of instructor Joan Oppenheimer. When Ranck wrote a character sketch of her maternal grandmother, who had died in 1967 at the age of eighty-nine, the family would not let Ranck rest until the details were fleshed out into a complete work. In writing the short novel, Ranck reached back into her fond memories of childhood visits to her grandmother's rural New Mexican home in the village of Nambé, and she synthesized them into her first published literary work. Ranck recalled sensory impressions of her grandmother's wooden stove, water well, the homemade pies and freshly baked bread in the old family home, as well as the warmth of an extended family living under the gentle protection of a revered matriarch. Ranck says of her novel, "Images were what I wrote, a portrait of the land and people I loved. The story line became a necessity, thin strands upon which to weave a tapestry." Protagonist-narrator Constance (Consuelo) Trujillo Sorensen is a Minnesota-raised artist who visits Nambé for the first time in search of her cultural roots. Persuading Doña Elena to sit for a portrait, Constance finds herself in a Hispanic environment that is initially uncomfortable, culturally and linguistically. Her emotional conflicts are resolved through the compassion of Doña Elena's family and the artistic and emotional support of grandson Roberto, a fellow artist and kindred spirit who leads her to a sense of artistic completion and personal wellbeing. The story is told through the eyes of an artist, thus conveying picturesque descriptions of the land itself and of the traditional types who sit for portraits, representing a bygone era.The book is mostly in English with a sprinkling of Spanish terms that are explained simply. It can be enjoyed on a variety of levels and is appropriate reading even for young adults.

The beauty of Doña Elena lies in its simplicity. It has a minimum of locales, few characters, and little dialogue to distract the reader from the feelings conveyed via narrative description, a typical example being Consuelo's first observation of Doña Elena in the village chapel:

How old was she? I wondered as I gazed at the serene face with eyes set deep by age and thin lips that rhythmically parted over toothless gums. Wisps of white hair had strayed from beneath her shawl, and she lifted a small hand to brush them into their proper place. The skin of that hand was translucent. I was sure that it would feel like the skin of a newborn infant if I touched it, and I so wanted to touch it.

"Relics," published in 1984, evolved from a short-story contest at the Santa Barbara Writers' Conference in 1978. It is also an intensely sensorial work. Ranck explains, "In the short story 'Relics' I provide only the images; the reader is free to provide his own story. Perhaps that is why it took five years to find a publisher for it. No one wants to work harder than the author when reading a story." The theme again centers on internal conflict and a sense of incompleteness.

Much of Ranck's creative work is unpublished, most of it having been written for young children. On a regular basis she creates stories to be used in the instructional programs for the National City School District day-care and preschool centers. When still a classroom teacher, she often encouraged her students to create fiction orally, which she would then record and invite students to illustrate.

In her professional capacity as a child-development specialist, Ranck has written several articles for local newspapers, advising parents in matters related to their preschoolers. Her recent promotion to director of the program has added responsibilities, making her involvement in children's literature somewhat less frequent, although she can still manage at times to write stories for others to tell.

Katherine Quintana Ranck's publishing hiatus in recent years is due in part to her husband's heart condition, which has required two transplant surgeries, and partly to the demands a career in education has on her time and creative energies. She looks forward to the time when she can once again return to her literary endeavors and pursue the publication of several in-progress works.