Our Co-Founders

Catherine Killingsworth

Catherine Killingworth co-founded and was the first executive director of Deep Center. She earned a BA in English at Yale University, where she won the Curtis Prize, the Wright Prize for Nonfiction Writing, and the Seymour Lustman Price for Arts and Culture. She studied creative writing at Cambridge University as a Thouron scholar.

In 2008, Catherine founded Deep, alongside Hartford Gongaware (founding board chair), Emma Lunbeck, Alex Borinsky, and Chelsea Dye. In 2010, she authored The Cure for IDK, a book of writing lesson plans inspired by Deep’s first year of writing workshops. As Deep’s executive director for five years, Catherine became known affectionately around Savannah middle schools as “that writing lady.” In 2013, Catherine stepped down as executive director in order to serve as an education professional.

Hartford Gongaware

A native of Savannah, Georgia, Hartford Gongaware in 2008 teamed up with a Catherine Killingsworth and a group of local authors to co-found Deep Center, for which he was the board chair until 2015.

Hartford graduated from Princeton University and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine. Mr. Gongaware was one of the founders of Silverpoint.Net, a web design company.

As a partner in the creative services firm Beautiful Hype, he now tells brand and product stories for companies nationwide. Mr. Gongaware’s work has been published in the Ontario Review and the Savannah Morning News, and online at Gutfire!