Kathryn Scanlan

Last updated
Kathryn Scanlan
Born1980
Iowa
OccupationWriter
Notable workAug 9 – Fog (2019), Kick the Latch (2022)
Awards Gordon Burn Prize, Windham-Campbell Prize

Kathryn Scanlan 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.

Contents

Life and education

Scanlan was born in Iowa in 1980. [1] She grew up in rural eastern Iowa. [2] [3] Her mother's family were farmers, her father's family racehorse trainers. [4]

Scanlan studied literature and art at the University of Iowa [2] then did an MFA in writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. [1] [3]

She lives in Los Angeles. [1] [4]

Career

Scanlan's first published short story was "Line", which appeared in NOON Annual in 2009. [5] [6] NOON founder and editor Diane Williams became a mentor for Scanlan [2] [3] and NOON published more of Scanlan's fiction throughout the 2010s, [7] [8] including excerpts from the material that would later became her first book, Aug 9 – Fog. [9] [6] Scanlan's story "The Old Mill" was published in The Iowa Review [10] and won the 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Prize. [1] [11] Other stories appeared in Tin House, from which she received a scholarship to attend the 2013 Tin House Summer Workshop, [12] Fence, [13] and American Short Fiction. [14]

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. [15] [16] The diary belonged to an elderly Iowan woman, and covers the years 1968 to 1972. [17] [18] Scanlan selected fragments from the 400 pages of the diary and rearranged them to form a narrative arc, ordered in five seasonal sections. [3] [15] 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. [18] [16]

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. [19] [20] [4] 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. [3]

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. [4] [3] These were carried out in person and then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, over the phone. [3] 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. [21] [17] [22]

In March 2024, Kick the Latch won the Gordon Burn Prize. [23] [24]

In April 2024, Scanlan was awarded the $175,000 Windham-Campbell Prize. [1] [20] [25]

Other work

Scanlan has also published art criticism and essays in Artforum [26] [27] and Another Gaze. [28] [29]

Awards

Bibliography

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Windham Campbell Prizes: Kathryn Scanlan". Windham Campbell. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 "Kathryn Scanlan: Gordon Burn prize winner on pushing the boundaries of fiction". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Interview with Kathryn Scanlan". The White Review. April 2023. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Kathryn Scanlan's Violent Compression". The New Yorker. 5 September 2022. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  5. ↑ "2009 Back Edition". NOON Annual. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  6. 1 2 "An Interview with Kathryn Scanlan". The Believer. 10 September 2019. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  7. ↑ "2015 Back Edition". NOON Annual. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  8. ↑ "2019 Back Edition". NOON Annual. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  9. ↑ "2011 Back Edition". NOON Annual. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  10. ↑ Scanlan, Kathryn (Winter 2010). "The Old Mill". The Iowa Review. 40 (3).
  11. ↑ "Recent Iowa Review Award Winners". Iowa Review. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  12. ↑ "Colonial Revival". Tin House. Retrieved 1 February 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 1 February 2025.
  16. 1 2 "Aug 9—Fog". The White Review. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  17. 1 2 "Author or subject?". The TLS. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  18. 1 2 Scanlan, Kathryn (11 June 2019). "The Anonymous Diary". Paris Review. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  19. ↑ "The Dominant Animal by Kathryn Scanlan review – deeply, darkly enjoyable". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  20. 1 2 3 "L.A. author Kathryn Scanlan wins $175,000 literary prize: 'Baffling and wonderful'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  21. ↑ "A Productive Tension: An Interview with Kathryn Scanlan". Southwest Review. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  22. ↑ "Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan review – straight from the horse trainer's mouth". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  23. 1 2 "Kathryn Scanlan wins Gordon Burn prize for novel Kick the Latch". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  24. 1 2 "Gordon Burn Prize: Kathryn Scanlan". New Writing North. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  25. ↑ "Eight writers win 'freedom and time to write' with $175,000 Windham-Campbell prizes". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  26. ↑ "Uta Barth". Artforum. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  27. ↑ "Louise Nevelson". Artforum. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
  28. ↑ "Twenty-Eight Portraits of Linda Manz (1961–2020)". Another Gaze. Retrieved 1 February 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 1 February 2025.
  30. ↑ "All Awards". Arts and Letters. Retrieved 1 February 2025.
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