Kate Isenberg ’93 reflects on the power of storytelling and supportive teachers
This article appeared in the 2024 edition of Full Circle, Castilleja's annual magazine.
When Kate Isenberg ’93, a visual artist, musician, and writer, thinks about her creative bedrock, she thinks of Castilleja.
“I enjoyed the atmosphere of support to be who I was as a thinker, as a creative person, as an athlete, as a member of my class community, as a friend,” remembers Kate, whose cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker and The New Republic and whose animated short film Dear Death received funding from Simpsons creator Matt Groening and played at U.S. and international film festivals. Kate also works as a freelance copywriter and college-essay consultant, and she is a songwriter-guitarist with two studio solo albums under her belt.
“At the heart of all my creative work is my deep love of storytelling,” Kate explains. “What unites us as people is our deeply human need to make narrative, to use narrative to relate to other people.”
Kate’s passion for storytelling was partly inspired by her grandfather Eli, a publisher of a community newspaper in Los Angeles. She grew up surrounded by art and books. Both parents read to her and her brother, and her grandparents gave her art books that she cherishes to this day. She grew up savoring The New Yorker (the same magazine that would publish her cartoons later).
On campus, Kate participated in plays, musicals, and choruses, where she developed her own voice and worked as a member of a creative community. “It wasn’t about the soloist. It was a group of voices,” she explains. The Counterpoint newspaper is where Kate published her first editorial cartoons. Kate also credits her English teachers, including Bill SmootHA, Cissy LewisHA, Susan BarkanHA, Judy RinoHA, and Elyce MelmonHA, for furthering her love of literature. When she got to college, she had a stronger foundation in writing than many peers, she says.
Kate is still close friends with several of her Casti classmates. “They remind me how to be a good person,” she says. “As much as my teachers taught us about character, I now look to my peers.”
Her advice to current students, especially those drawn to art and creative expression, is to pursue their craft and not be swayed by someone else’s definition of success.
“The will to keep going when no one’s listening is very important, to maintain commitment to storytelling when that’s not easy to do in our culture,” says Kate. “We all fall into saying, ‘Where has your film screened? What did somebody say about your novel?’ But as an artist, your job, first of all, is to ask yourself, ‘Is it good?’ And stick with your vision, apart from whatever the world may say about it. Make the work that you most want to make. Don’t wait for permission to do what you most want to do. Nothing is a mistake, because every step brings you to where you are now.”