Allegheny College Professor’s Deeply Personal Book Earns Literary Accolades

Allegheny College Biology Professor Catharina Coenen's talent for blending scientific precision with creative storytelling has earned her two prestigious literary honors. Her first book, "Unexploded Ordnance," has been longlisted by the PEN America 2026 Literary Awards and is a finalist for the INDIES Book of the Year Awards by Foreword Reviews.

Coenen's book is a collection of essays that chronicles how her grandmother, mother and aunt survived Nazi Germany during World War II. Through painstaking research, candid conversations and family stories, Coenen pieced together a harrowing account of how her grandmother fled bombing raids with two tiny daughters, always on the move - hungry, terrified, and just trying to stay alive. The title, "Unexploded Ordnance," refers to undetonated bombs that were left behind but remain dangerous today. "In a sense, these stories are psychological unexploded ordnance - buried in the past but still causing trouble in the present," she noted.

Growing up in Germany Coenen spent a lot of time with her grandmother, who shared some of those experiences. Coenen knew early on she wanted to write her grandmother's life story, but that idea laid dormant until 14 years ago. "I was supposed to take a genetic research sabbatical in Ohio, but the opportunity fell through," she said. "I had always wanted to explore creative writing about plants, so I sat in on Professor Matt Ferrence's creative nonfiction course. I tried dutifully to write about plants, but it always turned into a war story. Finally Matt said, 'You're going to let yourself write these stories.' And I did."

Coenen's scientific side guided her research, data, and fact finding, while her storytelling side focused on family accounts of living through the war. "My mother was a small child during World War II and was not fully aware of what was happening around her," Coenen said. "I was able to link up her memories to actual events and locations."

"Unexploded Ordnance," presenting a combination of storytelling, linguistics, biology, philosophy, and history, was published last October. Coenen says it was a labor of love and exemplifies the kind of interdisciplinary thinking that Allegheny College instills in its students.

"When parents ask me what makes Allegheny different, I always say it's the combination of majors and minors that students study," she noted. "Their major gives them a far wider world view and will help get them their first job. But later on, their minor will get them the corner office because they can think much more broadly than if they had just studied one discipline."