Kate Braestrup grew up in Washington, D.C. and is the daughter of the noted writer/journalist (editor of The Wilson Quarterly) Peter Braestrup (1929-1997). Kate's grandfather, Carl Bjorn Braestrup (1897-1982), worked on the Manhattan Project and co-invented a cobalt-therapy machine used for cancer treatment. 

Kate attended Parsons School of Design, New School for Social Research 1979-81; Georgetown University 1983-1986; and Bangor Theological.  She was a National Book Award finalist and received the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Nonfiction (Here If You Need Me) in 2007.

Kate met her husband, James Andrew 'Drew' Griffith, when they were both students at the Corcoran School of Art (now the Corcoran College of Art & Design). They were married in 1985 and moved to Maine in the late 1980s when the Maine State Police hired Griffith. In 1996 he was killed in a vehicle accident while on duty.

Braestrup has published two books:

• Onion (1990): The title is the nickname for Owen, the 13-month-old son of the main character in this novel, a woman who plans to become a feminist theologian. She has, however, put her plans aside to be wife to her police officer husband and mother to Owen.

• Here If You Need Me (2007), about losing her husband, a Maine state trooper, in an accident and becoming a Unitarian Universalist chaplain on search-and-rescue missions.

Braestrup lives now in Lincolnville with husband, Simon van der Ven, an art teacher at Camden Hills Regional High School, and their six children. She is a graduate of Bangor Theological Seminary and a community minister affiliated with the First Universalist Church in Rockland, Maine where she was ordained in June 2004, and serves as chaplain for the Maine Warden Service. In between her ministerial duties, she contributes freelance articles to various publications.