Kathryn Scanlan

Kathryn Scanlan
In a 2023 interview
Born1980 (age 45–46)
Iowa, US
Education
OccupationWriter
Notable workAug 9 – Fog (2019), Kick the Latch (2022)
AwardsGordon Burn Prize, Windham-Campbell Prize

Kathryn Scanlan (born 1980) is an American writer. She has published two novels and a collection of short stories. Her fiction often reworks non-fictional source material, including interviews and found texts. She has won the Gordon Burn Prize and the Windham-Campbell Prize.

Life and education

Scanlan was born in Iowa in 1980. She grew up in rural eastern Iowa. Her mother's family were farmers, her father's family racehorse trainers.

Scanlan studied literature and art at the University of Iowa, then did an MFA in writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

She lives in Los Angeles.

Career

Scanlan's first published short story was "Line", which appeared in NOON Annual in 2009. NOON founder and editor Diane Williams became a mentor for Scanlan and NOON published more of Scanlan's fiction throughout the 2010s, including excerpts from the material that would later became her first book, Aug 9 – Fog. Scanlan's story "The Old Mill" was published in The Iowa Review and won the 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Prize. Other stories appeared in Tin House, from which she received a scholarship to attend the 2013 Tin House Summer Workshop, Fence, and American Short Fiction.

Scanlan published her first full-length work, Aug 9 – Fog, in 2019. The book is based on a diary that Scanlan found at an estate auction. The diary belonged to an elderly Iowan woman, and covers the years 1968 to 1972. Scanlan selected fragments from the 400 pages of the diary and rearranged them to form a narrative arc, ordered in five seasonal sections. In an essay published in The Paris Review in 2019, Scanlan described how she later tracked down the diarist on Find A Grave and found out that she had died at the age of 95, four years after the diary ends.

Scanlan's collection of short stories, The Dominant Animal, was published in 2020. Containing 40 very short stories, it focuses on the relationship between humans and the natural world, especially animals. The collection continues Scanlan's mixing of genres, with some stories reworked from found texts and conversations, including an old book about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and a conversation with a bus driver.

Scanlan's second novel, Kick the Latch, was published in 2022. It is based on interviews Scanlan conducted with Iowa-born horse trainer Sonia, a family friend. These were carried out in person and then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, over the phone. The interview material is extensively reworked to form a linear narrative of the trainer's life, from birth to retirement, rendered in short chapters arranged in numbered sections.

In March 2024, Kick the Latch won the Gordon Burn Prize.

In April 2024, Scanlan was awarded the $175,000 Windham-Campbell Prize.

Other work

Scanlan has also published art criticism and essays in Artforum and Another Gaze.

Awards

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Windham Campbell Prizes: Kathryn Scanlan". Windham Campbell. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 "Kathryn Scanlan: Gordon Burn prize winner on pushing the boundaries of fiction". The Guardian. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Interview with Kathryn Scanlan". The White Review. April 2023. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Kathryn Scanlan's Violent Compression". The New Yorker. September 5, 2022. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  5. ↑ "2009 Back Edition". NOON Annual. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  6. 1 2 "An Interview with Kathryn Scanlan". The Believer. September 10, 2019. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  7. ↑ "2015 Back Edition". NOON Annual. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  8. ↑ "2019 Back Edition". NOON Annual. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  9. ↑ "2011 Back Edition". NOON Annual. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  10. ↑ Scanlan, Kathryn (Winter 2010). "The Old Mill". The Iowa Review. 40 (3).
  11. ↑ "Recent Iowa Review Award Winners". Iowa Review. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  12. ↑ "Colonial Revival". Tin House. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  13. ↑ Scanlan, Kathryn (Spring 2016). "The Dominant Animal". Fence. 17 (1).
  14. ↑ Scanlan, Kathryn (Winter 2016). "The Hungry Valley". American Short Fiction. 19 (61).
  15. 1 2 "Kathryn Scanlan remixes a found diary and T Fleischmann deconstructs a memoir". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  16. 1 2 "Aug 9—Fog". The White Review. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  17. 1 2 "Author or subject?". The TLS. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  18. 1 2 Scanlan, Kathryn (June 11, 2019). "The Anonymous Diary". Paris Review. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  19. ↑ "The Dominant Animal by Kathryn Scanlan review – deeply, darkly enjoyable". The Guardian. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  20. 1 2 3 "L.A. author Kathryn Scanlan wins $175,000 literary prize: 'Baffling and wonderful'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  21. ↑ "A Productive Tension: An Interview with Kathryn Scanlan". Southwest Review. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  22. ↑ "Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan review – straight from the horse trainer's mouth". The Guardian. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  23. 1 2 "Kathryn Scanlan wins Gordon Burn prize for novel Kick the Latch". The Guardian. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  24. 1 2 "Gordon Burn Prize: Kathryn Scanlan". New Writing North. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  25. ↑ "Eight writers win 'freedom and time to write' with $175,000 Windham-Campbell prizes". The Guardian. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  26. ↑ "Uta Barth". Artforum. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  27. ↑ "Louise Nevelson". Artforum. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  28. ↑ "Twenty-Eight Portraits of Linda Manz (1961–2020)". Another Gaze. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  29. ↑ "There is the sound, too, of a ticking clock: A Time-based Reading of Anne Charlotte Robertson's 'Five Year Diary'". Another Gaze. Retrieved February 1, 2025.
  30. ↑ "All Awards". Arts and Letters. Retrieved February 1, 2025.