Bosher’s early years were spent in Toronto, where she attended Branksome Hall. During her youth she spent several years living in France and the UK, where her father, historian John F. Bosher, took his research sabbaticals. She rowed for the Branksome Hall crew. Under the coaching of Hungarian Olympian Steve Sandor at the Argonaut Rowing Club, Kate qualified for the Canadian Junior National Team in the 8+. In 1991 she was part of the Canadian 8+ that qualified for the finals of the World Junior Championships in Barcelona.
During college Bosher attended the University of Toronto, where she directed plays and studied ancient Greek. She continued on for an MA in Classics, then studied at the University of Michigan for her PhD in Classics. While she studied the theater of ancient Sicily, Bosher sculled for the Ann Arbor Rowing Club. In 2004, she won the women’s elite single sculling championship at the U.S. National Championships, as well as the Royal Canadian Henley championship women’s single (the A.G. Muir cup). She completed her doctorate in 2006.
As a faculty scholar at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, Professor Bosher studied theater in its political and religious context of ancient Sicily and South Italy, known as “magna Graecia.” She directed a Mellon Sawyer Seminar on performance and reception and edited two books, Theater Outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy on her own and The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas, along with Fiona McIntosh, Justine McConnell, and Patrice Rankin.
Bosher married LaDale Winling in 2006 and gave birth to a son, Ernest John Bosher Winling, in 2010. She died of cancer in 2013.
In 2021, Cambridge University Press published Professor Bosher’s book, Greek Theater in Ancient Sicily. The manuscript was nearly complete at the time of her death. Along with LaDale Winling, scholars Edith Hall and Clemente Marconi prepared the manuscript for publication. They left Bosher’s text but completed the notes, updated the bibliography, and checked the translations to ready it for the press.
