Who or What is Pure Bright Fire?

Hi! I’m Katie. Whoever you are, I can pretty much guarantee you that you’re cooler than me.

I’ve lived within thirty miles of Boston my entire life and don’t anticipate that changing—I love Boston, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Books are the great love of my life—I write fiction, spent many years working in the publishing industry before taking a new job in higher education, and never leave home without reading material.

I love to sing and am particularly fond of musical theater. I watch a lot of TV and analyze it to death. I grew up swimming and still love it and I have a love/hate relationship with running. Playlists are my favorite way to listen to music. I’m a proud Boston College alum. I’m fond of chick flicks, drink hot chocolate instead of coffee, would love to go back to Disney World, and adore Celine Dion completely unironically.

See, I told you you were cooler than me.

Hogwarts House: Hufflepuff

Enneagram: 6

Zodiac Sign: Cancer

Myers-Briggs: No idea- I get a different result every time I take the test. The one constant is the “I.”

I started blogging in 2006, a few months after I graduated from college, on a blog originally titled “Struggling Single Twenty-Something.” This name, unfortunately, had an expiration date, as I turned thirty in July 2014. I was still single and still struggling (maybe not struggling financially quite as much as I was just out of college, but aren’t we all struggling with something?), but no longer twenty-something.

So I changed the blog’s name to Pure Bright Fire. Why? Because that’s my name—or, rather, the meaning of my full name:

Katherine = Pure, clear. Form of the Latin ‘Katharina’, from the Greek ‘Aikaterina’.

Helen = Bright, shining one, from the Greek.

Hayes = derived from Gaelic O hAoadha, meaning descendant of Aodh (“fire”)

I like how my full name, put together, actually means something that kind of makes sense. Google shows me some other instances where that phrase has been used:

“Pierce ye the foe with salted words of fire

The pure, bright fire of love celestial

And your reward shall be as your desire

With all the righteous prophets ye shall dwell.”

– “Memorials of Theophilus Trinal” by Thomas Toke Lynch

“And there burned there with the pure, bright fire of religious faith the scarcely less pure and no less ardent flame of patriotism.”

– The Cause of Ireland Pleaded Before the Civilized World by Bernard O’Reilly

“yes- and ‘twas the pure, bright fire of genius- it kindled, it flashed- it gleamed over the whole range of poetry- and what a world of bright creations lived, and moved, and had their being in that effulgent blaze.”

–The American Monthly Magazine, Volume 5

“And his head sank lower and lower beneath the benediction-touch of Her whose tenderness revived his noblest energies and lit anew in his heart the pure, bright fire of Aspiration.”

–Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self, Volume 1 by Marie Corelli

“One is far nobler than the other, and loves with a pure, bright fire.”