SAS Speaker Spotlight Interview: Kathy Anderson

We're excited to welcome Kathy Anderson as a SAS27 speaker! Read our interview with Kathy below to learn more about her and her work.

Kathy Anderson is the author of two short story collections: Vamoose: Stories and Bull and Other Stories, which won the Autumn House Press Fiction Prize and was a finalist for Publishing Triangle's Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, the Lambda Literary Awards, and Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in Short Stories, as well as longlisted for The Story Prize. Her first novel, The New Town Librarian was a finalist for Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in LGBTQ+ Fiction and a Goldie Award for Debut Novel from the Golden Crown Literary Society. 

Her short stories have been published in literary journals and magazines in the US and internationally, including Chicago Quarterly Review (forthcoming), Sinister Wisdom, New Letters, StoryQuarterly, Kenyon Review Online, Barcelona Review, Popshot Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, New World Writing, The Normal School, and Litro Magazine UK. One of her short stories was published by Short Edition in free Short Story Dispensers in airports, train stations, schools, libraries, and other public spaces in Europe, Australia, and across the US.

How did you settle on the order of the collection? What made you choose to open the collection with “Alondra and Krissie: A Photo Album,” a beautiful love story between friends, and end the collection with the titular story “Vamoose”?

I like to lure readers in with a story that feels welcoming and fun, so the opening story, with its image of lesbian librarians bouncing along in the back of a pickup truck, felt right. For the closing story, I wanted the reader to have the feeling of a whole experience coming to an end—as if you were leaving a party full of people you want to remember.  

Entering each of your stories, I was immediately gripped. What signals you that you’ve struck gold when writing an opening that will engage and hook your reader?

Thank you for noting that! It’s important for me to drop the reader right into the story. It often takes many rewrites and putting the story away for a while. When the true opening sentence finally surfaces, I recognize the rightness of the sound and the power of the feeling in it.

Your stories and characters carry a sense of amusement and playfulness. How do you work to incorporate humor into your writing? 

Humor is everything to me. I believe that literary fiction reflects life as it truly is—and humor sustains all of us through tough times and adds joy to good times. I love bringing the relief of laughter up to the surface, especially when writing serious topics. 

The simple explanation of how I work with humor is that if I think something is funny, it’s in. If I laugh every single time I reread a sentence (too many to count!), it has earned its place. 

Humor is very subjective, so there is no greater pleasure than hearing an audience laugh when you read dialogue that you wrote in a quiet room, all alone, chortling to yourself.

Can you speak more on how you play with story structure and formal elements throughout the collection? 

I love thinking about this because I don’t know the answer in my conscious brain. My subconscious, however, is very inventive! It’s all about what feels right, what sounds right. I’ve found that my subconscious will supply the answer eventually and it’s always a mystery to me what she comes up with. 

My part is to stay open, trust that the story will find its form, and stick with the answer when it feels absolutely right. Your use of the word play with story structure is spot on; it takes a light touch to build a story. 

Your characters are wonderfully unique and compelling. Can you describe how you approach character work; how you build your characters and develop their distinct voices?

I love my characters. They hang around my life for decades sometimes, before I get their story right. Where they come from—I keep notebooks, writing down an overheard conversation on a bus, a story someone told me about their great-aunt, or an idea that sticks with me and doesn’t go away. I stay open to knowledge about them that floats up from my subconscious. I try things like putting seemingly unrelated characters into the same situation to see what happens or asking What if…? And following whatever idea comes along. If this all sounds vastly time-consuming, it is! 

As a former librarian for over two decades, can you talk about what values you see in communities having public access to books/literature?

I believe that public libraries are the best places in the universe and librarians are invincible forces for good. It’s exciting to see public libraries busier than ever, new generations embracing their services, and people asserting their right to read whatever they want. 

My favorite full-circle moment is seeing on Worldcat.org how many libraries around the US and internationally have my books in their collections. Because what I love most about libraries is that our books live on when they are there—readers find them years after their pub date while browsing, when a local book club discovers it, when a neighbor picks your book out to rave about to a neighbor, when librarians recommend them and put them on display. Libraries extend the lives of books and that is a magnificent gift.

Newsletter Editor, Norah Clifford | info@tennesseewilliams.net 

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