American writer Kathryn Harrison (b. 1961) was raised in the kinship care of her grandparents from the age of 6.

Harrison was born in Los Angeles, California. Her young parents divorced when Kathryn was 6 months old. At the time, Kathryn and her mother were living with the maternal grandparents and they stayed there until, when Kathyn was 6 years old, her mother left home.

In The Kiss (1997) Harrison talks about the absence of her father after her parents’ divorce. She saw him once when she was 10 and then again when she was about 20, after which she and her father embarked on an incestuous ‘affair’.