APCD Catherine Varchaver (HQ Staff & Kyrgyzstan 1995-97) Edits Fly Fishing Book

Catherine Varchaver (HQ Staff & APCD  Kyrgyzstan 1993-97)  who is today the senior stewardship officer at World Wildlife Fund’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. where she writes extensively about global conservation programs, is the granddaughter of John and Maxine Atherton, who helped shape the art and science of fly fishing over the decades. She has just edited a book by her grandmother entitled The Fly Fisher and the River that will be published by Skyhorse Publishing in the spring of 2016. It will be published as well as a companion reprint of John Atherton’s (Catherine’s grandfather) classic The Fly and the Fish.

In her introduction to the book, Catherine writes of how she was given the unfinished memoir over fifteen years ago and last year, holding the rolled pages of the unfinished book, said, “I could hear my grandmother telling me, with her lilting laugh, that her dream was now in my hands.”

While not a fly fisherwoman herself, (Catherine can only remember fishing for bass from a rowboat in the wilds of Ontario,) she took on the task of turning her grandmother’s pages of remembrances organized around fishing rivers into a book.

The Spring 2015 issue of The American Fly Fisher Journal of the American Museum of Fly Fishing has just published Catherine’s foreword to the book in which Catherine shares her own memories of her grandmother.  Included in the article is a charming photo of young Caterine displaying her own catch of the day. No flies on this girl! Congratulations, Catherine!