I’m so tired of telling stories about the latest death in my life, but here goes another: Mochi suddenly died a couple of weeks ago. I spent thousands to try to keep her alive, which isn’t something I ever thought I could or would do, nor that I’d have to. But I had that sweet, lively, curious, healthy, vivacious rabbit from eight weeks old and I’ve lost too gottamn much in the last six years, so I couldn’t let her die without fighting for her. Even with a fight, she had to go. I can’t believe it.

I got her after my first queer breakup. I got her before my first big serious adult queer relationship. I got her before six people in my life died suddenly and terribly, and in grief, when I’d be on my knees in tears, she’d hop up to my face and lick my cheeks. She came with me when I left that big serious adult relationship and the shared home, and she greeted me when I came in my new apartment door, paws and ears up.

It’s exhausting to write this. It’s too soon. But it also feels important.

In all those deaths, there was never a body. There were ashes I never saw or didn’t see for years. There was one funeral, and four memorials, but two were virtual. The tangibility of these people being gone evaded me. The materiality of these deaths was reduced to the old, worn down, forgotten objects left behind. Nothing of value, nothing intentionally left to me or my family, a lot of destruction and bitterness in the wake of those lost.

With this sweet rabbit, an Ellison through and through, it was all body. I was with her every day. I watched her grow from a baby into an eight-pound fully-realized bunny rabbit. Without language, we comforted each other and played. I felt it the moment something was wrong. I was there every step of trying to save her. And unlike any of the other losses, I was there the moment she died, which was absolutely awful and couldn’t ever have been anything but too soon. I held her body to my chest and she felt the same as when she was alive, except too still. I screamed, holding her on my kitchen floor. I massaged her ears and feet to keep them soft. I used my hands for her beautiful burial.

Last weekend, I brought her back to the land where I got her: a friend’s home off the grid, where she had been meant for food and pelt, but made it home with me one night instead. Her mother was buried about 100 feet up from a rushing river, and that’s where she lays now, a spitting image of her big, all black, silky and lively mom. While I stayed with her still frozen body on my knees under tall pines, my friend gathered flowers and leafy greens from her garden to make a perfect final bed. She came back with a colorful pile and a shovel, and I dug a hole in soft dirt and sand under a huge bolder. I laid kale first, then a thin layer of lavender, orange and red nasturtium, pine, and wild flowers in white and purple. As she started to bleed from her little nose, I lay her on her fresh cushion. I never wanted to let her go, and I had no choice. Around her, at the suggestion of my wise friend, I placed six stones for those dead I never got to bury or see die or say goodbye to or any of the other steps that help make death tangible, digestible. Without them, in my life, death has dragged on, colored everything, started to take everything. This is another invaluable gift this animal gave. There is more to this than I think I’ll ever be able to say.

Over her, I put more pine, echinacea, fennel, more wildflowers and nasturtium, motherwort over her head, where she most loved to be rubbed and petted. I sobbed. I loved her. She looked, still, like she could suddenly wake, like she was only sleeping in this tender bed in the ground. I will always miss her.

I put one small handful of the soft earth around her, then more, then others slowly over her despite every instinct in my body. My friend hummed I don’t know what, a repetitive, cyclical trance of a sound.

Somehow I managed to cover her and mark her spot, somehow stand, somehow walk away. There was nothing else I could do. No care she needed from me, nothing I could give her or tell her that I hadn’t already, many times. All there was to do was leave.

There’s so much more to all this that I have been and will be writing in the coming months. But these details are an offering for anyone who might need them. And in the meantime, Boots and I are getting used to a whole different kind of relationship, without that big star of a rabbit to define it for us.

What’s next.

There’s a lot of life lately, too. Come and live some of it with me, would you?

August 16.

I’m really looking forward to this Sunday. Samantha Allen, Senior Editor at them asked if I would talk with her about her new book, PUCK. Obviously, I said yes, and The Stranger thinks it’s a good idea, too. (Thanks, Julianne!) This book is so implicitly readable, so fun, such a celebration of queer drama. This is needed levity, perfect for summer, and literally based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare heads, LGBTQIA+ readers and writers of romance, I wanna see you Sunday, August 16, 7pm at Elliott Bay Books.

August 23. 6pm. NONFICTION FOR NO REASON.

Columbia City Gallery, in collaboration with The Space. Let’s pack this house. The beloved and wildly talented, Corbin Louis is bringing us some new songs. My new and dear friend Barbara Lanciers is flying out from Newburgh, New York to read because we bonded that hard in Tennessee last month. My Panelli is a local gem and if you don’t know them, this is your damn chance. Mico Astrid, angel and star, is leaving us for a life abroad days after this reading, so you will not get to hear her multi-genre talent if you don’t come this very night. Ari Cofer will be just home from Bread Loaf, and Troy Osaki is locally known and understood to be a positively fantastic writer and orator, as well as an organizer and activist. The talent is fucking top notch on this one, you guys. Every dollar pays artists for their work and time. Get your tickets now; let’s get lost in the stories and p a r t y.

September 12.

The Stranger Genius Party. Get your tickets. You will want to celebrate the winner for Literature, I PROMISE YOU. Also, enormous love to the runners up, also to be announced soon, and to the winners and runners up in other categories, particularly the already-announced Betty Wetter and TUSH, Actualize Air, and Beacon Cinema.

Save the Dates

September 25. Big news for this date. Can’t wait to tell you about it. <3

October 1. Nonfiction for No Reason is going to Iowa City, co-hosted with the crème de la crème of humans, Alayna Becker.

In closing

If you only choose one of these events, make it NFNR. Let’s give stage time and money to the creatives in this city so they know how much they’re needed and loved. In that spirit, I look forward to getting weird with them next weekend.

Thank you always for reading, y’all. Take care of yourselves. <3

Katie

What I’m thinking about is how to keep this sweet series spicy, hot, desired. We keep getting big turn outs, but I sweat it out until the doors open every time. Just like me, the NFNR audience doesn’t plan very far ahead, nor buy well in advance.

The irony of these questions about spicy, hot, desired is that I’m wondering about this in other areas of life as well, being fresh out of a relaysh or two: Happy Pride? ANYway, we all know it’s hotter not to care too much. But I do. A lot. Like, I love this series for how it feels, for how it’s grown, for what it seems to do for readers and people who come. At the same time, I’m still very much recharging from a few different life events and figuring out how to pour myself into this community building and also go to bed with a little left for myself at the end of every day. My desire, my heat right now, is in going inward, quiet, time to myself for listening, reading, exploration. I want to sit in patches of shade and stare. That’s where I’m at. I’m sure at least some of you want to do these things, too. I don’t know how to put that in an Instagram post, but maybe I should figure it out, huh? I don’t want to sell you things. I just hope that you all want to show up, again and again, for each other, hear stories, and that I can keep giving to you in ways that give back to me, so that all of this is sustainable.

On Thursday, my friend Joyce Chen is one of the readers. I met her about eight years ago and soon after, invited her to a writing group I put together. That’s when I first read pages of a memoir she’s been working on all along, one that I can feel from afar is getting very, very close. She’s likely reading from that manuscript this week, and that she will finally be on the NFNR stage after three years of these events is thrilling and long overdue. I’m telling this so you know: this will be another warm, inviting, and exciting night.

Get tickets

I want to speak about all of the readers for Thursday: about how sweet and talented Cody is, and how many times I’ve tried to have Patheresa read, and how Serena Chopra has talents that spread in all directions like wild queer tentacles, and how absolutely and delightfully brilliant Mita Mahato is, and how her projections will make the whole event feel like a sleepover at a wild scientist’s house. But if I go on too long, I won’t get to sing their praises fresh in 48 hours.

This is to say: the work will be there for you all on Thursday. Personally and professionally, I think you’d be nuts to miss it. Come out and maybe we can have a little too much wine and end up rolling around on the floor of Friend Museum, because Ali who runs the place, has a lot of soft surfaces in there. Also a lot of beautiful old clothes and objects and things.

Get tickets

In the meantime, I’ll keep on keeping on, and I hope you do, too. It’s absolutely beautiful out there, and it’s also rough. Stay well, rest, be with your people. I hope NFNR is your people.

Love,

Katie

I went to a residency for three weeks in February. I left my whole life behind, including my bunnies, Mochi and Boots, and let myself get really deeply lost in writing. I promised myself I’d start to write things held in this space in which meals were prepared for me and cleaning done for me, that I hadn’t been able to approach before. So that meant altars, creating my own lighting and smells, shipping a box of things that would conjure what might help me do this work, and saying no to a lot of social invites from other fellows in the space, no matter how much I enjoyed their company or deeply desired the distraction.

What came to me in short bursts that felt like hours and hours that felt like minutes was play. Experiment. Questions. Ideas to chase. I didn’t know how little I allowed myself these things, and how much juicy stuff can come of it. I know this is cliche. But I’m reiterating, reinforcing, mkay.

So when I got back at the tailest end of February, I did not want to write here. I wanted to continue my longhand seeking, away from a keyboard and anyone else’s perceptions.

I’m back because I want to tell you where I’ve been, and because I’ve been reentering the world this spring. See the gallery below? April 5, 2026, Nonfiction for No Reason came back after a much-needed year-long hiatus because my life would not allow me in front of a microphone for a while. Honestly, I’m still a little punchy, but I try to ride it and make it work. You can see from the pics: the vibes were extremely good and the room was packed. I can’t believe how delicious this night was. It’s still hard to articulate.

So I’m doing it again, but this time, and for the first time, in Kingston, New York, aka the Hudson Valley, aka where Brooklyn moved to during the pandemic. It’s woods and hikes and swims and buildings older than our government, and this line up is going to be so incredibly and powerfully sweet. The great Jessica Lynne is co-hosting with me again, after we had such a good time doing it in New York City in 2024. She was also a reader at the third NFNR in Portland, just before she went to Tin House, and it was at that reading that she found her agent. This is why this series exists. For connection. For exposure. For a platform.

You’ll see from this silly ass poster I made this afternoon, that Jess and I are introducing some other incredible artists. May Teng is a University of Iowa drop out which is incredibly fab to me, and I met her at that same resideny in February, so I know you are in for some really good shit with her. Tarisai Ngangura is a wildly talented journalist, photographer, and author of the novel released from Harper Collins last year, The Ones We Loved. This is a writer handpicked by Jess, and you can’t get a higher recommendation in my book. Melisse Gelula is also a Jess invite, which, again, goes far enough for me, but the things is she also runs Memoiring, so she is deep in this world of nonfiction and writing a memoir of her own. I really cannot wait to meet her and to have the rare treat of hearing her own work when she so often does the work of holding up others. And I’m so sorry if you haven’t heard of the great Chet’la Sebree. I’ll have an interview with her out at The Stranger soon about her brand new book Turn (W)here, a truly beautiful and form-resistant/regenerative collection of writing about fertility, Blackness, and those of us who cannot help but wander and seek. She’s one of those prize winners, those truly polished, brilliant writers who teaches something whenever she speaks.

Did I tell you this was not an event to miss? I don’t lie to you guys. I love y’all, in fact. As best I can. Nonfiction for No Reason is one of those ways. If you can, send the love back. Turn out en masse, ensemble, enabled. All ticket sales go to the writers and the venue, which is a local gay bar I can’t wait to absorb the lesbian vibes at.

Spread the word to your east coast lovers, exes, friends, distant colleagues. Let’s pack this room. And if you’re around, come out. I’ll probably be reading more from the wild risks I took alone in that room at the Virginia residency in February.

I’m writing from inside a ridiculous amount of sad, a cloud of grief that’s moved in thick with this par-tic-ularly gray and dreary Seattle winter. It’s been a year of death again, more than one again, and other big losses that’ll see the light in story form at some point, more than likely. But I’m not making a ton of promises these days.

I recently found myself in a position where I needed a toaster. For over a month. I ate bread, gluten free mind you, untoasted, with butter. A few times. It wasn’t right, but it was okay, as Whitney Houston once said. To make it more right, I succumbed to turning on the oven to toast two tiny slices, and this was nice both because it toasted my bread and warmed an otherwise very cold kitchen. I did this a few times, but it takes too long, it’s wasteful, and there’s something that strikes me as barbaric about putting my bread directly on an oven rack. I could have used something to protect it, sure, but not a plate, and then we’re talking about more waste.

Can you tell I’ve been spending a lot of time alone?

Anyway, there’s a new toaster waiting to be unpacked, and bread to be toasted, and a winter to be seen through to its end, when little green sprouts burst from the earth. Is that when this grief fog will pass? Or will I be honking my fog horn long past when the sun returns? Friends assure me I’m doing great. Strangers continue to tell me I’m too hard on myself. And everyone, even rightfully bitter shopping mall attendees, love my new haircut. My hope is that being perceived, reflected, commented upon is a lighthouse, but my desire is to submerge with the blue whales and wale like gd intended when the ones we loved and hated and needed, die.

Maybe, starting tonight, so many things will be better because I can toast my bread in the convenient methods made for us in this modern world.

Today, I thought about who I might call to walk me through a broken heart. Who would know about that?, I wondered. Who could tell me what to do about it today, and this week, and the rest of my fucking life? At some point, I thought no one really can, just like how I thought within the time of writing this paragraph that toasted bread, or a toaster, rather, is not much more than a convenience. Perhaps it’s an effort to care for myself, even the planet by not burning more energy than necessary. Perhaps I could see more of a gift in this little white toaster than I’m allowing. Perhaps that’s the way to healing my broken heart, broken again and again and again the last four years, perhaps most by me and my limited perspective on the magic daily conveniences can bring, and how much love can come in the form of a new toaster.

Pain makes you desperate. And these deaths have me a little confused about what I think, what I believe, is true.

Have you seen The Chronology of Water yet? Have you read it? I find I’ll need to watch it again before I can speak to it. But I’ll say that Kristen Stewart said you can tell her favorite color from watching it, so I’d say it’s blue. The blue eyes, the ocean, the pools, the walls and furniture, the tiles, the water, water, water. And then, red. And orange. And yellow. Bathingsuits, blonde hair, blood.

I’ve been sauna-ing and cold plunging this winter: A fire in golden wood, and the sky and water. It’s the best I ever feel, ever. All that heat, then big gray whale blue whale blue. The deep sounds that come from me when I dunk, excused because everyone knows the pain of cold, that particular pain. Very few know, of nor about, the particular pain of these particular deaths, so when I show that death pain, it scares most, not just a few. This makes the pain worse, for me. So sneaking the death pain into the pain of the cold is a trick I play on the ones who don’t know. Or, I’m sure I’m strange in all that pain coming out of me so that it’s detectable, but being a stranger has it’s advantages. Who’s to say what that strange is? I don’t want to be strange, nor a stranger, but death, these deaths, they do what they will to you. To me.

If I could, I’d toast my bread on an open fire every morning, sweat from the heat of the flames, and swim it all out in ice water. Lidia knows about the body, what fire and ice can do for pain and death. Since March, I’ve been swimming, finding ways to float. There isn’t a thing I can do to make the pain go away, so I live with it, which makes me slower and distracted. A toaster makes it easier. And swimming.

Love to you all in these strange, dark days. Like a friend told me, keep swimming.

Katie

Have you all seen Sinners? I did. When those white vampires showed up, teeth bared, eyes glimmering, bloodied faces, thirsty, the feeling in my body was, Mommy?

She died the same way my dad did, in 2021.

I’ve been processing a lot. I’ve been on an island of experience, and I don’t like it. The loneliness is ruthless, profound, ancient. I haven’t felt this kind of sudden panic since I was sixteen, younger, probably as soon as I could allow myself to believe, to understand they could both be gone or dead one day.

This grief, she’s a mean one.

Some of it has been coming out in these interviews I’ve been writing for The Stranger, because I’m overflowing with it. If you don’t already know I do that, here’s a list of them, a little way into some of what’s been going on with me, because I’ve been so absent here, and also a way into some really incredible books.

Starting with the most recent, first: Melissa Febos, The Dry Season. If the book tour and press for this incredible work hasn’t touched you yet, yes it has. In this piece, I wrote about why it wrecked me with its timing. Plus I wrote it a few days before a memorial, so it’s emotionally juicy, if you’re into that, and will help you to understand why you need to read Melissa’s latest book.

Do you know Daniel Tam Claiborne? He wrote a thoughtful novel called Transplants about belonging to multiple places, being of many identities at once, the horrors of being an immigrant in the United States, and why it can still be so appealing. Please read his careful words about these subjects and his really special book.

In conversation with Vivian Blaxell, an Australian academic and spitfire trans writer and brilliant mind, I spoke with her about her book-length essay Worthy of the Event. I stepped onto a slippery slope with her about hope. The next interview (not yet out) with the great Lawrence Burney about his forthcoming gorgeous memoir No Sense in Wishing undoes some of the thinking and chatting I did with Vivian. Still, check out this conversation and see if you think hope is useless, then read the next one coming soon, and see if you think it’s actually essential.

This interview with Lidia Yuknavitch about her latest book, Reading the Waves, was incredibly special. We spoke before my dad died, and reading it now, I see how this book held me in very long-term healing I was doing, before I was ripped open again. For some bizarre reason, this conversation didn’t get a lot of reads and I don’t know how the book has done, but MY GAWD, it would be in your best interest to read it. Especially if you’ve ever lost anyone, if you’re a water sign, if you’re a misfit (her usual audience), or if you just love her, as I do. This was a delight of an hour, and a precious one, and I think, I hope, it comes through.

I was very, very lucky to get to talk to Freda Epum about her first book, The Gloomy Girl Variety Show. Again, if you’re paying attention, you know this book is making the rounds, is on all the lists, a favorite, and for good reason. I was out of my depth in conversation with her; my goofy charm did not match her wide-reaching intelligence. Her first book is a feat of form, daring and I think, honestly, a little over my head. It’s one I’ll read for years, trying to find a way in, and it’s a pleasure to do so.

Mike Fu and his novel Masquerade was such a delight. I met him at the first year anniversary of Nonfiction for No Reason in Tokyo, and it’s incredible to me that such talented people with such able and elastic minds simply walk among us, available to meet at parties. Read his wild answers, then his totally entertaining book.

The very first interview I ever did for The Stranger, a careful and affectionate pick: Daniel Saldaña París’s essay collection, Planes Flying Over a Monster. These tales about Mexico City, drinking or not drinking, and using writing itself to recreate a self: this conversation was entirely up my alley. Also, Catherine Lacey, an incredible writer as well, and his girlfriend, has an incredible new book out, The Möbius Book, so I’m thinking of them both a lot lately.

If you’re interested, I also put together this round up of books for 2024 that I didn’t get to cover that are truly some of the very best that came out of the Pacific Northwest last year.

And now I’m pooped. Please write me and tell me what you think of all this. I love to hear from you.

Love to all of you. What a time to be alive.

What a time. We all know. I can’t shed the energetic blood to repeat it all, all the feelings. So I’m reaching out here to connect in this weird little way, to share news, to say I hope to see you all for these things coming up.

NFNR X SIFF

With great thanks to the incredible Joanna Pawlowska, NFNR is co-hosting a screening and reading at SIFF Cinema in Queen Anne, a dream space in this city for so many of us.

We’re screening Zurawski v Texas, which has won many awards and tells the story of three women in their collective legal battle to maintain and/or gain access to abortion for everyone. It is not a feel gooder, but it is a galvanizer if you’re feeling hopeless.

So will this event be. We’ll have a reading from Lifthrasir Green, a transmasc writer and editor, who will tell his story briefly after the film. Then we’ll have a presentation from Hanako O’Leary, an incredible and award-winning artist who has made astonishing sculptural work rooted in Japanese lore and storytelling all focused on abortion.

We’ll have a bar meet up after for those who want to do some radical, community-based scheming for the future. More details on that at the event.

My goal this year is that every NFNR serve a need, that every one sparks mutual aid whether by fundraiser or by community building, and you know the latter has my heart. It’s at the center of this little org I made.

So get your tickets now, because 50% is going to the Northwest Abortion Access Fund which serves people who can’t get the abortion and care they need nationally. The other 50% is going to SIFF and the filmmakers.

Did you get your tickets yet? They’re $15.50 for adults, and you get a movie, art, and community. Tell me a better deal?

the latest for The Stranger

I got to interview the incredible Freda Epum. If you don’t have her book yet, you’re missing out. Here’s why.

NFNR at AWP and a panel

Before NFNR on March 28 at 7pm (see poster below for killer deets), I’m moderating a panel I created called Everybody Gets a Stage. We’re literally in the first time slot Thursday morning at 9am, baby, and we’ll have Wil Turner, Jason Koo, Jessica Johnson, and Jen Winston talking about how to keep a community like this going.

The official description goes like this:

As so many essential and communal literary pillars fall, writers and readers seek ways to find each other, learn from each other, and hear new work. The emergence of national reading series in the last few years reveals a desire for art and connection that won’t be left unsatiated. Join us to learn how to start your own reading series or grow one you’ve already started, and hear from new and established series founders about how to build a community from scratch and keep it thriving.

If you’re going, I hope to see you in LA in that gray conference room. <3 We’ll warm it up.

Otherwise, if you’re not paying to get into the huge space filled with recycled air, there’s this.

We’ll be using all donations to go toward LA GoFundMe’s that came out of the fires. To donate, go to the NFNR donation page, and put LA Fires in the comment section. That’ll get you on the list for the night and all proceeds will go to writers and artists that lost their homes.

that’s all folks

No time nor juice for personal thoughts or feelings at the moment, but please know I appreciate this community so hard. Please pull your friends here from Instagram. Please come say hi this Thursday. Please take care of yourselves.

Hugs,

Katie

Apologies for the radio silence. Life has become a storm, no?

Anywho, none of that for now please except I hope you’re all, every one of you reading these words, finding radical ways to fight and to enJOY and eat and sleep and make.

I wanted to pop on here because I was thinking about this fence. If you follow me on that shit ass platform, you know I’ve been obsessed with this fence I’ve made for Bird, my dog. She needed a yard to run leashless inside of without threat of cars or other things, so I built this fence, for her really. I liked the house without one. Still, I did it well. I was reflecting on why I did it well again, because it’s been profound to do something well and to stumble upon a new skill like this, having wanted to build a home, like with wood and my hands, since I was a kid. So I was reflecting again, trying to understand why it’s been so meaningful to screw pieces of wood together in distinct shapes, and I remembered about my time as a baker this morning.

I remembered how I loved and was best as the croissant. I know what makes a proper French croissant, and I know how to make the classic shapes correctly, particularly the plain. The repetition, the light fingers, fast hands, getting trays in and out of fridges quickly all in the name of keeping the dough and butter firm and cold so as to have the greatest lift when it’s time for the oven: I performed these tasks with great skill as well. The pride came from feeding people, from creating a something that had utility and that you could see clearly and very soon if it was executed well or not.

Even more precisely, working with organic matter meant that there was variation and variable in every single triangle of dough, and that my skill had to come from the facility of my fingers to manipulate each piece so that it had its own integrity but also looked like the others. So that there was both uniformity and uniqueness in every piece.

The same was true of panels in a fence. Each one is different and distinctly fitted to its place. I tried to put the last gate in upside down because I was tired and lost track of which side was which, and it wouldn’t close. Then I turned it back to the way I had built it, and it fit perfectly, like a glove. The top and bottom were not the same length, but they appeared so because I built them that way.

I’m sharing with you all a rough and new idea about creation and finding your own particular skill sets. I’m hoping that in this investigation of my own, that I’ll be discover what it is I’ve been trying to say in book form for so long, what my particular voice wants to do on the page and how my story(/ies) want to tell what’s happened.

I don’t believe this means that I need to write a book in which each section is nearly identical but slightly different. That sounds agonizing. So I’m not sure what it does mean yet, but I’m circling around it, obsessively and with great satisfaction. I love questions, I love seeking, I love a journey to nowhere in particular or at least to somewhere but I don’t know where until I’m there. It’s why, I guess, despite the agony, I love writing and essay in particular.

If you want to, reply to this email and tell me about ways you love writing and why. I’d love to hear.

NFNR February 27

More details and pretty posters coming soon, but save the date! We’ll be at SIFF Queen Anne screening a powerful doc about abortion access in this country, then we’ll have a few local readers speaking to their unique experiences with abortion. Half of all ticket sales will go the Northwest Abortion Access Fund. Keep an eye out.

Love y’all and more soon.

Katie

I’ll have images soon and the objects themselves for sale at events soon after that, but in the meantime, you can get advance, limited-editions through the extremely essential NFNR 2025 Fundraiser on until midnight December 31, 2024.

We’re raising $15,000 and we’ve brought in over $6,000. THANK YOU. AND: If everyone on this list gave $30, we’d more than meet our goal!

<3 Donate NOW pretty please! <3

And: I know $30 isn’t nothing.

If you give $5, it makes an enormous difference. REALLY. And no matter what you give, I’m sending you a handwritten note of immense gratitude. How about that? Something to look forward to in 2025! Not nothing either!

What $15,000 pays for: 125 writers at $100 each, plus $2,500 in venue costs all year.

And that’s it. Writers and space for them to read. Period.

Different donation tiers (below) get you free entry all year, and the very first line of aforementioned merch. Patches are for donations under $500 and limited-edition crewneck sweatshirts for over $500.

Want to just buy the patches or sweatshirts? Let me know in the comments. :) I’ll have images for you soon!

Anyway, DONATE $5 or whatever you can! <3 Or please share this with people who love reading, books, the arts in Seattle, in the US, in Japan, at all and want to directly pay writers and arts spaces for their time and labor. THANK YOU, ALWAYS!

In 2024 news

Not sure who wrote the best books in the PNW in 2024? Who isn’t. But here’s a list (and a second entirely equally wonderful list) I wrote for The Stranger to get you started.

I respect and admire the work of every single one of these writers. I wish I had more time to hold up every one of these books in the way they deserve, but this is what this crazy, modern, post-apocalyptic world allows for. Please enjoy, and please read these wonderful people.

What I’m reading/watching now

I’m prepping to interview Freda Epum, whose forthcoming memoir is hitting every list. Look her up. The book is short and fragmented, but I’m really taking my time with it because it’s very much about mental health. I’m still unclear about how much to reveal about this subject and about myself and my family, geriatric millennial living in the Trump-troll-age that I am. But for now I’ll say that I can’t wait to talk to her about the rawness of this book, admitting herself to institutions and familial loneliness, alongside the inventive otherness of the book, writing staged scenes in which it’s unclear what actually happened to her, what’s made up, and what the difference is anyway.

While I choke on my own anticipation for what will likely be a predictable and disappointing RHONY finale and reunion (Brynn sucks and she used to be my fave, Erin can’t stop making trouble and looking really hot, what’s *going* *on* with Uba?, Jenna and Raquel are perfect, Sai and Jessel are embarrassing for opposite reasons, and Rebecca Minkoff is Rose from GET OUT?), I’m turning to random new holiday classics.

I saw The Ice Queen at The Beacon last week and I can’t stop thinking about it. I was sitting next to a theatre baby twink who greatly enhanced the experience for me with their wild giggles and finger clapping, if that’s what it’s called. Can I get a youth to help me? Anyway, they improved the experience, but it would have been great regardless.

@chappellsfanthe only thing i could focus on the whole time #chappellroan #chappellroanmidwestprincess #jimmyfallon #midwestprincess

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I needed this sweet and unhinged dip into 1980’s fantasy. Having just surfaced from a Neverending Story obsession and always ready to revisit The Labyrinth, these costumes, the lighting, the timing, the 90-minutes and done, the wicked witches, the female director Päivi Hartzell, the topless gays guarding a castle run by children: I could go on and on. It serves. It delivers. It does what needs to be done. Etc. Do you need a plot? Okay.

The Ice Queen wants to get her cold hands on a green gem deep inside a mountain, but needs the warm hands of a mortal, so she steals a little boy from the sunlit sands of the earth. The boy’s sister then goes on a quest to save him from her terrible intentions, holding a doll version of herself all the way and surviving one preposterous scenario, shady character, and make-shift special effect after another! It’s wonderful, and talking about it here, I think I should really get off the “reality” TV for a while.

Jan 5 NFNR

I’m deep in winter tireds, but my heart beats faster thinking of this January line up for our first NFNR of the year. Look at them. Then look them up. Then get tickets, or donate, and I’ll get you on the list for free.

Miss you all. See you soon, I hope. Stay warm and loved in the rain and cold and dark.

Thank you, always.

Katie

So something that I was warned about early in my enthusiasm to feed the desire for Nonfiction for No Reason: burn out. I jumped into building Nonfiction for No Reason fluffy-tailed or pony-tailed or something, and I’m still so unbelievably excited and blown away by the relationships NFNR fosters in my life and for people who get into it. Also: Money is so freaking tricky you guys. I know there is plenty, there is all these writers deserve for the writing hours, the nerves getting on stage, the time and energy they give us in the room and with their work.

This particular issue of this newsletter is about finding those reserves, battling burn out, and setting up 2025 to feel full of ease, richness, mutual support, lush, plenty. This fundraiser for 2025, launched already but louder on this here Giving Tuesday and all, is an act of defiance against the spreading belief in lack and the dread of what comes in January. Instead, this fundraiser promises that in January, on January 5 to be precise, we will kick off another year of more writers new to the NFNR stage, more venues, more cities, and more countries where we’ll share our stories and connect. Are you excited? I’m fucking excited.

Ready to help? Here’s the breakdown. I’m treating tax-deductible donations to NFNR like a membership model, as a way to try it out and a way to deepen your investment in the organization. So here’s what’s on offer!

Ready to donate? By all means, please do!

Reflections of 2024

To enumerate what NFNR did this year:

We went to Tokyo. Twice.

We became a fiscally sponsored organization, which makes those tax-deductible donations possible. Bless.

We received invites to locations all over the country and the planet Earth for events in 2025 and 2026.

We found so, so, so many new writers to love.

Amy Hirayama stepped up and hosted for me when I got covid.

Eric Acosta brought his magic to us via video and made beautiful recordings of so many events.

Hinton Publishing’s Speak the Sojourner became our very first sponsor.

We created NFNRmini, a summer mini series in partnership with Jude’s in Rainier Beach.

We had our first video nonfiction pieces shared at Northwest Film Forum.

We were covered in The Stranger.

We raised $1,000 for Common OBJECTS, the second beloved space of our beloved Common Area Maintenance in Seattle.

Jessica Lynne and Ravenna Koenig co-hosted and co-curated with me.

Leo Elizabeth Takada and Florentyna Leow co-curated and co-hosted the second NFNR in Tokyo.

We sold people’s books.

Nonfiction for No Reason got its own Insta account and has grown by 100 followers every month it’s existed. <3

We won more small grants, including $3,000 from Poets & Writers just to pay the New York City readers in September.

We made infinite connections and started dozens of friendships.

We made Seattle a sweeter place to live.

What’s Coming in 2025

Oop. Do you support this newsletter? If so, please enjoy a very special sneak peak into what’s coming in the first few months of 2025!

So on January 5, we’ll have…

Read more

I won’t dance around the known Central and South American beauty standards and popularity and dangers of plastic surgery all over the body, but it’s also not something I know that much about, particularly because I’ve never seriously considered it. So, casually, the thought occurs to me sometimes: I could go to Sao Paolo, stay with my friend, and get one done, cheap.

In strangely twisted timing, this thought occurred to me the night before I went to see The Substance, on a whim, a rainy day matinee. I don’t know what it was. I’ve just turned 40, I’m from LA, I had a narcissistic mother (whom I loved; but she was clinical, not casually “narcissistic” the way everyone is now), and I’m thinking about tucking and plumping and lifting things because IT’S CULTURAL OKAY?

The rage at aging, at myself, is showing. This is what won’t leave me be about this film. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

For those that don’t know what this thing is, here’s the astonishing trailer that had my jaw slack several weeks ago.

I wanted to see it a month ago when it came out, but I was scared. I’m not a horror person, and I also heard there were bad reviews coming out. I wasn’t going to inject treaturous images into my mind for a shitty movie. But when Hinton Als said it rocked, then I was ready. I’d go alone. I’d do whatever it took. I needed to know what this was all about.

If you watched the trailer and you’ve noticed the color palate and font I use for NFNR events, then you know that the aesthetic of this movie scratches an itch for me. The deep base sound track, the intensity, the surreal scenario as grand metaphor for an all-too-familiar-reality: these are my drugs of choice. Plus, the ending absolutely slaps. I sat for the last hour wondering how on earth this would all conclude, how much blood and gore and violence I’d have to hide my eyes from before I could know the end of this woman’s self-hatred. Despite my deep physical discomfort with the visuals, I was zero disappointed.

SPOILER ALERT: Here’s one of the last shots of the movie.

MORE SPOILERS, OKAY? In this movie, Elisabeth Sparkle, played by Demi Moore, battles her mortality, her vanity, her ego, tears apart and kills her dreams, then literally brings them back to life, only to be killed then revived by them as well. I’m telling you, this movie is a roller coaster of metaphors and culminates in a Carrie-esque scene in which Sparkle and her younger, beautiful-er sub-self, Sue, return as one wildly deformed and actively disintegrating monster in a prom dress, spitting a fire hose of blood all over a disapproving audience, spinning in pain and glory, with what I can only recall as metal noise punk blasting behind her. If she must destroy herself, then everyone will watch and soak in her physical destruction.

It’s funny that I mentioned my mom earlier: my mother self-destructed. I think about self destruction, as a concept, much more often than I think about a boob job, now that she’s gone. I think about her rage. I think about women’s rage, cis and trans, distinct from each other, but rage all the same. I think about white women’s rage, the absolutely unhinged nature of it, ready and willing to take down the human race for its suppressed depths. Now’s not the time to get into the degree of suppression and rage among white men, a far more destructive force, exponentially. So I think about my rage, my mother’s Elisabeth Sparkle’s, Sue’s (her younger, beautiful-er sub-self) when I’m talking to a customer service representative who wants to explain how I dialed the wrong number, when a man makes a kissing sound at me on the street, when I need to scream at high volume into a pillow, but I’m afraid to scare my dog.

I think about Sparkle’s yellow coat, Demi’s plumped lips, my mother’s painted nails as described by the coroner. I think about female destruction and release, about selfhood as a way out of this black hole. I think about the things that make me more whole: moving slow, considering a breath, taking note of the rain. Cliche things. Deeper and more personal things I didn’t realize I’d be challenged to broach here. For example, I grew up riding horses: I am a gay horse girl, it’s true! What a self. What an identity! Strangely, in Rainier Beach, Seattle, I live a five minute drive from a barn that has been there for over a century, and I just so happen to know the owner. This very day, I went, on a whim to that barn and remembered myself. The hay and the horseshit, filthy hands, big licks, broad and soft backs, horse people and their babbling about horses and horse things: these things allow me to speak from my chest. It is one way I tap back in: my legs and my fingers know how to move around the dirt and the stalls, the hay and the buckets of oats. Cold from the setting sun, warmed by the big bodies nearby and their soft noses: I lived in the valley riding horses, escaping Los Angeles and its scenes. I petted and cleaned horses before and after thirty-minute drives with my mother in a blinding rage over traffic and a million things she wouldn’t say, but would blame me for. Again, more than I expected to confess in this little newsletter. Hey new subscribers! Lol.

I suppose now is a good time to repeat that I’ve been obsessed with this movie, and to say that I’m perpetually startled but not surprised by the way my mother and her death in 2021 come around a corner at me when I least expect it.

It’s Scorpio season, and I’m a Scorpio moon, with three other Scorpio placements. If you want to embrace the season, see the spookiest shit that’ll come out all year, and go All The Way There, see this incredible film by this French filmmaker who left it all on the floor and made room for Demi Moore to totally and completely do the same. Bless them both. Bless the women and artists who do this for us. May this little missive be in service to them, in their honor.

Promise to have more NFNR news soon for those here for that. And if you’d like more of this kind of thing, please let me know.

Love to all.

Katie

But there’s so much. But first.

Remember during the pandemic, how big bodies were all over ads and magazines? How people were promising to care about Black lives in this country and all over the world? How everyone was talking all the time about how much everyone cared about everyone else and how beautiful everyone was and how we’d maybe turned some kind of corner?

What happened? I’m nostalgic for lock down. The bodies we’re being sold are more emaciated than they were in the 90s, no? The vibe is kinda radical and ruthless and pushy, which I love, but it’s also kinda hopeless and bad and dark. There’s this weirdly hopeful tenor, in a throwback way, in an Obama-era way thanks in large part to Kamala, that feels like a mild, temporary, not-at-all-scratching-the-itch relief from an assumed impending global ruin on the way sooner than later.

During the pandemic, Twitter and Instagram became these “safe” “places” where people loved and supported each other because it was the only way we had to be together without burning our eyes and brains out on Zooms. They became the spaces we could tell each other, in real time, what to look out for, how to stay safe, what to do and where to go, when everyone who was supposed to help was lying to us or getting it really wrong. I got used to this relationship with social media. I still sometimes mistake those spaces as being that way, even though they haven’t been for literal years already.

The loss of that coziness, that feeling of us all going through the same thing and different things together, was made even more extreme when we all started going outside again. Nonfiction for No Reason happened, in large part, because I couldn’t believe I had so lost touch with a literary community in Seattle, that I had nowhere to read in my own city while a national bookish event passed through. I needed us to circle up again. I pulled in my favorite, most treasured readers, and some surprises, and we warmed up together. It was so good.

I don’t know what to do about these 2000-era ass-crack jeans that are back, much less the massively disastrous events surrounding us from every direction BUT NFNR continues to warm up rooms, make people feel good, bring us together. We lol, we say our messy, weird truths, we hug and blah blah, and go home on highs from the connection and exhausted from all the listening and talking.

I’m planning for 2025. I’m thinking about how to keep this little ship sustained, thriving, and how to keep myself, it’s compulsive and impulsive and sentimental captain, fed. Like, literally. I’m excited to share those plans soon, whatever they may be. In the meantime, thanks. As always. For reading, for coming out, for being part of this footloose journey.

For now, here’s what’s coming

Oct 11, 7pm, Little Saigon Creative with Hannah Murphy Winter, Jane C. Hu, Nathan Vass, and Sasha Su-Ling Welland, co-hosted with Ravenna Koenig.

Actual, real nonfiction and long-form journalism. Four readers so they can read longer and you can really GET INTO IT with them. They are not lightweights. Being in close proximity to journalists the last few months, I can tell you if you don’t already know that these are the types that walk toward a fire rather than run the other way. They’ll have stories you want to hear. Just look at the books they’ve made and GET TICKETS NOW.

Nov 1, 7pm, Northwest Film Forum with Eric Acosta, Bill Carty, Dan Navoti, Alex Gallo-Brown, Chelsea Werner-Jatzke, Mike Fu, and Patrick Milian.

Mike Fu is beaming in from Tokyo, poets are exposing their true selves, there will be video essays with family footage, peeks into books long in the works, and there are only about 40 seats. This will be a banger, and our last NFNR in Seattle of 2024. Come party so hardy dudes!

Nov 16, 2pm JST, Tokyo! with Polly Barton, Karen Hill Anton, Motoyuki Shibata, and Thu-Huong Ha, co-hosted by Leo Elizabeth Takada and Florentyna Leow.

It’s been a journey, but we’re launching round two of NFNR TOKYO. These writers are wildly incredibly globally good, and it’ll all be on livestream. Tickets coming soon.

We’ve been in the actual news

Did you see? Thank you to The Stranger for the coverage and to Adam Willems for the sterling journalistic coverage of all we’re trying to do! And to Billy Winters for these gorgeous photos of us. <3

My first Stranger interview

It came out this week! This was an incredible book, and very difficult to choose over the other incredible books out right now. You can read the interview here, but also please peek these other writers who have wonderful work out NOW!

In addition to this first interview with Daniel Saldaña París [@dsparis], I wanted to shed some light on other books released recently that are fantastic. If you don’t pick up Planes Flying Over a Monster, or even if you do, don’t miss these. 

It was wild reading Tisa Bryant’s [@misstisab] Unexplained Presence alongside Laura Paul’s [@laura_n_paul] Film Elegy. Bryant’s book is essential reading and a re-release from Wave Books [@wavebooks1], a dearly beloved local Seattle Press. While their focus is poetry, this is a prose collection that walks no line of genre, but creates its own. 

Wave describes the book: “Moving from cultural analysis to cinematic (re)creation, Bryant's prose traverses like a tracking shot through John Schlesinger's Darling, Patricia Rozema's Mansfield Park and Virginia Woolf's Orlando, giving voice to characters whom have otherwise been structurally silenced.” Are you not compelled? It’s a mind-bender, and one I will return to again and again for lessons on how to say what must be said.  

Local poet Laura Paul has been busy bending genre as well, stretching into autobiography and prose in one of the very first books from Prroblem Press [@prroblem.press]. Formatted to look like words projected onto a movie theater screen, Paul creates an evocative tribute to the medium as well as to the filmmaker Amy Halpern. Don’t miss it.

This last recommendation doesn’t need any help from me, but if you don’t yet know Jessica Hoppe [@nuevayorka and @jessicahoppeauthor], now is the time to know her. I’ve been waiting impatiently for First in the Family [@flatiron_books] because Hoppe is a standard setter in everything she touches--fashion, activism, writing. From the publisher: At the time of a cousin’s overdose during the pandemic, Hoppe had been in recovery for four years, but… “hadn’t told anyone. Hoppe shares her journey… and takes the [reader] on an investigation of her family’s history, the American Dream, and the erasure of BIPOC from recovery narratives.” This book is close to my heart. I think it will be to yours, too.  

AWP, babyyyyeeeee

It’s a weird organization, but boy do we all have a good time when we’re together. I’m one of the lucky ones this year who had a panel accepted: apparently there were 1,597 event proposals this year, and only 369 were accepted. The panel, EVERYBODY GETS A STAGE, will feature Jason Koo, @brooklynpoets founder & executive director; Jen Winston of Empty Trash in LA and author of GREEDY; Jessica Johnson of Constellation Reading Series in Portland/of Tin House and author of

of Sunday Salon in NYC. March 2025, in LA, where I grew up, at the conference where NFNR was born. It’s gonna be juicy.

And yes, obviously, NFNR will be at AWP, March 27, 7PM in a gallery downtown mostly likely. SAVE THE DATE.

NFNR NYC, Sept 12 was amazing.

I loved it. It was better than I could have imagined. You all give me hope. I’ll be back.

If you’ve read this far

Bless you. Thank you. Come on Oct 11.

Love,

Katie

I’ve praised Jessica Lynne many times, publicly. I’ll say again, and many times after this, that I can’t wait to cohost with her SEPTEMBER 12 in New York City. If you’ve read her bio, then you know: She is a founding editor of ARTS.BLACK, an online journal of art criticism from Black perspectives, currently an associate editor at Momus, and host of the limited series podcast, Harlem is Everywhere. Plus, everything she does is really, really GOOD.

On Sept 12, we’ll be in the East Village, where, in a past life, I rode my bike to get to work, barista’d, babysat my cousin, and failed to date anyone I liked. Would’ve helped if I was out. ANYway, it’s gonna be a time. The LINE UP. Look!

GET TICKETS BEFORE THEY SELL OUT

In preparation for this wild evening, Jess and I asked each other some questions. In round 1, I’m asking the questions! In round 2, I answer to her.

In which I ask Jess…

Why did you say yes to doing NFNR in Portland? 

I was delighted to get your invitation to read in Portland. It was a great way to begin my time at the Tin House Summer Workshop and to also have a chance to learn a little more about Portland’s literary scene. I’m not someone who reads my work in public often, so I appreciated the chance to read in an environment and alongside people who appreciate the beauty of nonfiction!

What made you offer to help out with helping to make an NFNR happen in NY? 

Similarly to your invitation to read in Portland, I was excited by this chance to collaborate on an NYC iteration. I’ve started two small publications which have brought their own unique challenges but they have also offered me incredible experiences and community. I believe in initiatives that are created to celebrate new voices, inter generational gathering, the traditionally published, the non traditionally published, etc. I have learned that these environments are rare and in a city like New York, can be even rarer. Plus, this city was my home for so many years. I love being able to offer something back to it in a way that honors what it has given me.

Is there a reason why you chose these two particular readers for NY (Jet and Kristin) before any others? 

I really like this question. During my MFA program, Kristin was invited to lead what is referred to as a “masterclass” for the nonfiction students. I hadn’t read her work before but when I learned that I was accepted into the class, it became a great introduction to her writing which I find to be extremely potent. So, in the workshop, Kristin facilitated a conversation about pace and time and it hit me immediately as something I needed to hear. I remember feeling so invigorated after leaving the class. And I’ve carried the essence of that conversation with me into other work. 

I met Jet through our good mutual friend, the poet Ica Sadagat. Jet is a sister of my mind. And, in the context of MFA worlds, we both know what it means to be Black, Queer Women in very white academic setting. Before Jet, I hadn’t had another Black woman essayist read and respond to my manuscript. The gift of her friendship has been knowing that I am never alone on this journey. Plus, Jet is from NYC and it was important to me that a reading series in the city feature writers who are from the city. 

Why do you think people should turn out in NY on Sept 12? What are you specifically excited about for that night? 

The reading series is bringing together so many different and exciting writers who are writing across subject and also write across genre. People should come with open minds and open imaginations! Plus, Book Club Bar is one of the best literary spaces in the city and I think this pairing is the perfect way to kick off the fall season. 

What do you hope the future of literature, publishing, writing looks like for all of us going forward? (Just a small question.)

I don’t expect the publishing industry, particularly on a corporate level, to be a radical site for most writers. We are seeing that play out now as many writers and cultural works (especially in the Global North) take a stand against the genocide in Palestine. So, it’s my hope that as folks continue to write and tell their stories, there will be room for embracing small presses, outlets, and platforms that are unafraid to link a political mission to their editorial mission. 

In which Jess asks me…

Who do you read when you are looking to reset or ground yourself after a moment of upheaval? Whose words act like a balm for you?

Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness comforts me. bell hooks and Audre Lorde (especially Zami) comfort me. Virginia Woolf and her writing about water comforts me. Hinton Als always feels good. Writing about Los Angeles and about alcoholism are both comforting to me; though I think the longer I live in Seattle, the less that’s true.

I have a copy of Dorothy Parker’s short stories from when I was twelve that I think was my mom’s, and though Parker’s voice troubles me now, it’s comforting to hold that book, which I used to read over and over, alone at lunch time on a stairwell.

I’ll be honest that I don’t have many books that hold me. In reading, I’m always looking for something that turns on my lights, and if my brain is firing, I tend to feel motivated, inspired, energized. I start wanting to write, or chase an idea down. Television and movies have always been a place to rest: taken me outside of any pain, confusion, or sadness so that I can take a break, exit it, become someone and somewhere else for a while, then return to myself a little clearer for having left.

Can you tell us about the beginnings of NFNR? How did the reading series originate?

The short version of this story is that I was bitter no one asked me to read when AWP came to Seattle in 2023, so I threw my own party.

The longer version is that I had been writing for the first time about my mother’s death, felt driven to share it, and saw AWP as an opportunity to do it, while also asking my dream line up to share their work. I also felt starved for connection and camaraderie, as that was a time when people were feeling safer being in crowds, taking their masks off, and we all missed each other desperately.

At the same time, Seattle has long been a poetry city, with great readings in that genre, and otherwise slim pickings and/or sparsely attended and slightly sleepy readings in the others. After a couple of years of pandemic access to the incredible nonfiction and prose readings in other parts of the country and the world via Zoom, I couldn’t go back. I wanted dig up that energy here, because I knew we had it.

When the AWP 2023 reading was a hit and people were asking when the next one was, I heard that same question echoing in my mind, and before the event was over, I was thinking of dozens of writers I wanted to have on stage.

I also promised myself that wherever I went, I would bring this thing with me. It would be a community maker, a thread tie-r, a point of connection not just for me, but everyone who wanted it to be. I’m still working on that part, but I think it’s happening.

So that was that, and here we are.

What projects of your own are you currently working on?

I have a couple of essays in draft mode and a backlog of ideas I need to get down. While I’m in New York, I’m going to the library to watch recordings of my uncle in plays I never saw before he died, and that will be an essay, for example. I’m working on a collection that’s as much about putting myself back together through writing as much as through living, after a few really intense grief years.

Even though this reading series centers nonfiction, how fluid are genre boundaries to you?

Extremely. I just finished Daniel Saldaña París’ collection of essays, Flying Planes over a Monster. In the prologue, he quotes Antonio Machado: “Through a dearth of fantasy / one lies shamefully: the truth is also an invention.” In his own writing, again and again, he choses phrases that imply he is an unreliable narrator, that he might be lying, that he’s not sure if he remembers something one way, or the complete opposite, then simply goes about telling what happened next, supposedly.

As the reader, the recipient of these qualifications, I felt annoyed, even blown off. As a writer, I understand, and this makes sense to me. Truth with a capital T does strike as impossible so often, but I think it’s also a luxury and a privilege to say so. There are truths that must and can be proven, known in the body and on paper. I’m not sure what to call this: wisdom maybe? Intuition. Honor. Justice. Did you kill someone or not? Did you receive the same treatment by someone with more power than you, or not? But I believe personal truth is available to us. Sometimes that personal truth is also a fiction, something unprovable. The mind is a strange sieve, then a vacuum, then something else. The body maybe is the more reliable narrator within us.

This is all to say that genre is a trick, a matter of convenience for sales. And it’s also a bar to uphold. If you call your work nonfiction, what truth are you telling? Same question for fiction and poetry, but in an entirely different way. These forms and methods of telling story strengthen each other and can get at a bigger truth, if we serve them that way.

To that end, do you write across genre? What do you learn as a writer when/if you do?

I haven’t written fiction in a very long time. I’m told that in my essays, I write lyrically. I’m terrified of attempting poetry at this stage of the game: I know a lot of very serious poets who I’d be ashamed to tell I was playing with line breaks. But when I’ve written poetry in the past, it’s taught me a lot about just how much I really have to say on something, and how much filler I’m creating in prose. And, briefly, fiction has taught me, predictably perhaps, about tension, character, and to always remember that the reader needs a dynamic tension in the lines as much as in the content.

THE NEWS

In short, here’s what’s coming up the rest of the year. Mark those calendars, catch us on the livestreams if you’re not in that town, and come out to see us all and hug us in the dark and cold!

Sept 12

Book Club Bar, New York City. Delali Ayivor, Jet Toomer, John Englehardt, Lindsey Trout Hughes, Kristin Dombek, Anastacia Renee, Lilly Dancyger, and Daniel Allen Cox, with Jessica Lynne as co-host. 7pm. TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW BBS.

Oct 11

Little Saigon Creative in the International District of Seattle, Washington. 7pm. Co-curating and co-hosting with NPR’s Western Bureau Chief, Ravenna Koenig. Official line up announcement coming soon.

Oct 24

This is still top secret, but I’ll see you in LA, dahlings. No NFNR, but I’m finally reading again. <3 It’s gonna be juicy.

Nov 1

Northwest Film Forum, Seattle, Washington, 7pm. This is the first time I’m announcing the line up! Featuring: Mike Fu (who’s Zooming in from Tokyo!), Eric Acosta, Dan Navoti, Alex Gallo-Brown, Chelsea Werner-Jatske, and Bill Carty. It’s going to be very cute.

Nov 5

This is also not NFNR. You might notice: THIS IS ELECTION DAY. Gd help me, I’m hosting a reading for Hinton Publishing, and curating the line up. Official announcement coming soon, but here’s the description. Look out for tickets.

Reading Through It offers a literary alternative to election night coverage, a bit of "counter-programming" for those who wish to focus on the power of art, community, and action, regardless of the election's outcome.

Six fantastic and poignant writers will share works that serve as a reminder that a commitment to positive change transcends any one political moment.

Nov 16

Last and wildest: We’re going in Tokyo again. With the help of readers from the first round in Tokyo last March, Leo Elizabeth Takada and Florentyna Leow, there is a thrilling collection of readers coming together. We have a few confirmed, and if you can read Japanese, then enjoy this preview. Final line up TBA soon. Livestream will be available! <3

Jk. Here’s the English version.

See you all soon! <3

Katie

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If you haven’t heard of The Stranger btw, please get acquainted with this precious source of Seattle local journalism that has survived the tyranny and destruction brought upon of local and independent press over the years. And if you don’t yet know the new editor-in-chief, Hannah Murphy Winter, I swear to gd, get to know them.

NFNRmini

Speaking of The Stranger, Nonfiction for No Reason is getting coverage there this September, so their Photo Director, the delightful and beloved Billie Winter (yes she’s married to Hannah), is coming to photograph the last NFNRmini of the summer. It’s gonna be a big one, so we’re taking pictures. Come out dressed cute and bring your friends. It’s FREE, the weather is still good, and I swear, these WRITERS on stage will blow you away. Look at them! We have poets, journalists, fiction writers, all within this foursome, and the VOICES are not to be missed. Have I ever lied to you?

RSVP for NFNRmini 9/2

It’s the weekend

And I have to run out the door to celebrate a pair of lesbian Gen X’s 20th wedding anniversary. Bless this sweet life.

Keep your eyes on that hot and fast Insta feed for more updates on Nonfiction for No Reason coming Oct 11 and Nov 1 in Seattle, Sept 12 in New York City AT LONG LAST, and we’re going again in <3 TOKYO <3 Nov 16.

Then we gotta talk about 2025. Can you believe? I cannot.

One last note.

Marcus Harrison Green is a generous and brilliant human, and a beating pulse in this city. He is a journalist, an essayist, a gorgeous storyteller, and he’s also the man behind Hinton Publishing, a BIPOC-owned and run Seattle-based maker of books. Speak the Sojourner is a way to read shorter works chosen by him and his editors from local writers with unique tales to tell. Speak the Sojourner is the reason NFNRmini happened this summer, and it’s been so wildly beautiful. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe to Speak the Sojourner. Ten dollars a month is a way to help keep Hinton thriving at a time when we know publishers of color are so fkg far from getting what they deserve. Speak the Sojourner is a way to stay in the loop on writers you just won’t necessarily find elsewhere, especially not in bigger publications, and it’s good. It’s really good.

SUBSCRIBE NOW

Love y’all. See you at these readings.

Warmly,

Katie

So I’ll tell you that when I’m well, “Couples Therapy” is, conversely, very likely saving me from myself. Orna Guralnak is a genius, a dream therapist, and the anchor of the show, if you don’t already know it. If exposure to a really fantastic therapist isn’t reason enough to watch the show, the third season features a brilliant and utterly charming queer couple, one from Palestine, the other’s family from Lebanon, and Orna is Israeli. Watching the three of them navigate that and the progression of a very sweet relationship between the three of them is compelling, inspiring, beautiful.

NFNRmini

For the first time, I’m handing over hosting duties this Monday, July 29. Amy Hirayama is a brilliant, hilarious, talented, graceful artist and writer, and when I thought of her as someone I could ask to fill in for me while I stay locked up drinking down antiviral tinctures, I felt immediate relief. She’s going to be an incredible host, and I feel physical pain about missing these readers.

ICYMI, Hinton Publishing’s Speak the Sojourner is the reason why NFNRmini exists. They sponsor this summer series, making more readings possible and allowing me to pay the writers more. Speak the Sojourner is an incredible online literary magazine. If you love our Seattle literary community, subscribe to the magazine for $10/month, get incredible writing and art, and support NFNRmini. <3

Also, Jude’s generously offers their space on Monday nights when they are usually closed, so everyone has access to one of the best bars in Seattle just for us.

For all these reasons, and without even mentioning the beautiful work from Woogee Bae, Anne de Marken, Theo Moon, and Danielle Marie Holland, come down this Monday night if you haven’t made it yet for the work, for the community, for the drinks.

NFNR NYC

Here is the first and official public announcement of the NFNR NYC line up. We’ll have:

Delali Ayivor, Daniel Allen Cox, Lilly Dancyger, Kristin Dombek, John Englehardt, Lindsey Trout Hughes, Anastacia Renee, and Jet Toomer.

This line up is deeply personal. If you came to the very first NFNR at AWP 2023, you may remember that Anastacia and Lilly read there, so it’s a gift to go to them this time, my friends and teachers, and create a stage where they live. The others are dream readers and friends as well, and Jessica Lynne, the brilliant and talented co-host for this round, was a reader at the Portland event in May 2023. I’m deeply grateful to her for offering to help coordinate this back then, for meaning it, and generally being extremely smart and cool.

We’re rolling deep and these writers are exceptional. If you’re in the city or nearby, don’t miss this one. I’ll have a link for tickets soon.

NFNR TOKYO

This magical thing happened last March where we brought Nonfiction for No Reason to Tokyo. And then it was really clear that Tokyo wanted more events like this, that there is in fact, a deficit of events like NFNR there. So Leo Elizabeth Takada and Florentyna Leow are working with me to create another event in Tokyo in early November. We’re digging up funding, spaces, and of course, writers to read to us live and live streamed. Stay tuned.

I’m going to sleep.

It feels like I’m going to sleep forever, but everything ends. So let me hit this next Paxlovid round, and I’ll see you on the other side.

Thank you forever and ever for reading, for following along, for being.

Stay safe and healthy. <3

Katie

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A pitch: If you can, please become a paid subscriber. It means a lot, it goes a long way, it helps support Nonfiction for No Reason, and you get special bits and bobs from me for your dollars.

Regardless, I appreciate you.

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Interview with Greg Mania

Y’all. I got my first byline in Electric Literature. This was all such a wild and wonderful surprise. I swear everything sweet Gregory touches turns to yellow gold, and this is no exception. Read this interview. It’s very personal for us both.

Interview with moi

And last week, my very dear pal April Sopkin published a questionnaire featuring yours truly on her newsletter, Something Out of Nothing. It’s called “Taking Care,” and it’s a series of questions about how to tend to yourself whilst in the throes of writing. Hell if I know, but I tried. Again, would love to hear whether you agree, disagree, etc. And don’t sleep on April. She’s writing your future favorite books.

Vashon Artist Residency

I’m here. I’m doing it. It’s hard. It’s beautiful. This racoon is looney tunes and comes around every night. I love him. He scares me.

NFNRmini

The first of the summer cracks open Jude’s doors Monday, July 1 at 7pm! One by one: I found Jaime through the great Indira Dahlstrom, who read in April and said she’d love to see Jaime on stage. This will be her first reading! I found Jodi-Ann through my usual sleuthing and couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked her sooner. She’s a pro and has a book coming out in 2025. <3 Maggie’s book just came out a few days ago, but Rachel Edelman has been all over introducing us for forever. I’m so thrilled she’s joining us in the middle of her book tour. And I met Korede Oseni at unpoetry, run by Eric Acosta, when I read there meself, and was charmed by their read. This is another juicy one. See you there. <3

NFNR NYC

We have a location. We have a co-host. We have almost the entire line up confirmed: a list of names I’m choking on. If you’re in New York this fall, come see us. Good lordy it’s gonna be so fun.

Everybody’s in LA

The show has the same font, brand colors, and aesthetic as I’ve unprofessionally put together for NFNR—which really only proves to me once again just how much I love and am influenced by a distinctly arid, desert-esque, aka LA aesthetic—and this is jolting at every opening and break to different segment. Does this mean bulky font and neon colors are tired? Yes, likely. Do I still love them so much and do they excite me? Yes. Will I change them when inspired by something else? Sure, probably.

So, I don’t like this show.

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Read more

The black and white images come from the great Eric Acosta, who’s whole video of the event you can watch here. He also runs the reading series unpoetry in Seattle, which I highly recommend. You never know what you’re gonna get.

This is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading, please become a paid subscriber. I’d love to send you special, surprise, secret-ish content like class discounts, access to comments, and recorded readings from Nonfiction for No Reason.

Please share all this good news on the socials, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. And thank you, as always, for reading.

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Can you feel the energy of those pics? So good. You can watch the April livestream part 1 and part 2, and the May livestream on our YouTube channel, in case you want to feel what it’s all about.

I guess I’m still not saying much I guess. So you’ll just have to watch.

What’s coming

I think I told y’all already that the next official NFNR will be in September in New York, and that I’m co-curating with Jessica Lynne, who is brilliant and whose reading you must know.

But that was before we received a generous offer from a new sponsor who’s identity I’ll announce soon. In short, they want more NFNR. So this summer, I’m creating what I’m calling NFNRmini, a series that will run every other Monday from July 1 through Sept 2. We’ll go for one hour, feature four readers, have a drink or two, and call it a night. This means more stage time for more writers, more time and space to be together in the name of nonfiction, and more writers in Seattle paid for their work. Bless. A gift. A halleluyah. Can’t wait to make more official announcements, but please know the line up July 1 is so FREAKING good, so keep your schedule free 7-8pm that night.

Drafting

I’ve been working on an essay about an installation piece I saw in Osaka a couple of months ago. In the process, I thought of Alexander Chee’s words from How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, about putting the worst thing that happens right up front. I’m paraphrasing. If I’ve gotten it wrong, please correct me in the comments because my copy is still in moving boxes.

In trying to decide the worst thing that happened in the context of this essay, I’ve run into trouble. The quickest answer is, since November 2021, my mom killed herself. Easy. But what feels good, and what started as a paid-for provocation from my therapist, is to wonder what about her death happened TO me exactly. It’s my mom’s story. What’s mine?

As a result, I started thinking about the days and the first year after she was gone, and I’d hardly call that the worst thing that happened to me. It was an inarticulable time for lots of reasons, but definitely not the worst.

There were lots of deaths that followed in the year after my mother died, and strangely, they all came with a kind of waiting period before, during, after the death. I’ll get into this in the essay, but this kind of purgatory: maybe this was the worst thing. Waiting for a death to come; the period between the death and when I learned someone I loved was dead; what that period of not knowing feels like in the years since.

Anyhow, I’m curious how many of you struggle to find the worst thing that happened, if you struggle to decipher what is yours and what is someone else’s.

That’s all I have for you this Friday. Thanks for sticking with me. Thanks for reading. Thanks for supporting.

<3,
Katie

This is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading, please become a paid subscriber. I’d love to send you special, surprise, secret-ish content like class discounts, access to comments, and recorded readings from Nonfiction for No Reason.

Please share all this good news on the socials, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. And thank you, as always, for reading.

UPGRADE TO PAID

Where to begin.

First, apologies. I’ve thought of this little space on the internet frequently and missed it. I’ve been buried under moving boxes, and my thigh and gluteus muscles will tell me nothing else. But boy, do we have some catching up to do.

Second, the Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show.

Just kidding. I’ll get to it at the end, but DAMN. Damn.

The big news

In reverse chronological order:

Nonfiction for No Reason (NFNR) won a grant last week from ArtsWA. This particular award is called the Emerging Organizations Grant. We’re emerging! They had 90 applicants and we were one of the lucky few chosen. It’s a big deal; it’s a new funder; it means more folks see potential in this wild randomly international series. I’m so grateful to you all for being part of that, watching from afar, participating in big and little ways.

This grant also means fiscal sponsorship from a Seattle nonprofit called Shunpike, which means NFNR can apply for bigger grants as an “acting 501c3” which we couldn’t do as an organization without that status. My dreams for this series are big.

I’ve been listening for where the strength of this series lies. What do I need from it? What does the community need from it? I’ve been hearing more and more about collective and collaborative community support, which turns away from the traditional methods of funding an organization. I want to learn more. I want to hear from you all what you get from this thing, what you want more of, what you wish it would do. Tell me about it. Anonymously. Loudly and publicly. I’m listening.

Next up

As part of this collective collaboration I’ve been thinking, learning, being about, the next Nonfiction for No Reason is MAY 18 AT 7PM and a fundraiser for Common Area Maintence. A long-standing crux of our literary and arts world in Seattle, they’re expanding to another building down the street in Belltown to create an exclusively writer-focused space. Our goal is $1,000 for the night, the line up, as usual, is insane, and the extras are wild.

I really don’t know what to say first. Off Alley is serving duck rillettes on crostini and handpicked white and red wine. They are a beloved spot for me and many and I cannot wait to have them there feeding you all. Meghna will be at the table and she is a wild delight of a human. They alone are a reason to come. And that’s just the snacks.

Then there are the writers. Jesus. So, clockwise from top left, Nina St Pierre is in from New York. Again, a reason to come, all on her own, and her new memoir, LOVE IS A BURNING THING, is burning me down. Then there’s Putsata Reang, who is a wonderful force and who I’ve long been trying to find the right date for. She’s here, she’s coming, you gotta hear her. Jessica Johnson is up from Portland as is moonyeka, the two of them wildly generous members of the literary and arts community in the PNW. Jessica is the co-host of Constellation Reading Series from Tin House and moonyeka co-created the incredible Paruparo, a QTPOC-centered artist and healing venue that offers classes, workshops, and practice space. Jessica will likely read from her own new memoir, METTLEWORK.

Should I go on??? Amy Hirayama is also a community force and an inherently creative and resourceful fount of a person. Her reading will surprise you; count on it. Jay Aquinas Thompson is a dear heart and friend as well as a storyteller that comforts and sets on edge at once. Kamari Bright is a performer, artist, and writer, and will have video art to go with her piece. And farthest from least, Dr. Anu Taranth is a light seeking justice inside and outside of academia and I cannot wait to hear her for the first time.

Naturally, Third Place Books will be there selling what you hear.

All of this in the name of making space for more work. Seattle needs CAM’s new writers space.

Come out. Be with us. Show your support. No one will be turned away. <3 Suggested donation is $10 - $50, but as they say, we need you more than we need your money.

get tickets

In other news

Tokyo wants to keep NFNR going. I’m working on how to do that. So we’re taking the summer off to document what it is we do, apply for more grants, get things in order, and REST.

We’ll be back in September, in New York, with an incredible line up I’m co-curating with Jessica Lynne, past NFNR reader, recent MFA grad, art world critic, MoMA podcaster, and an incredible writer with a beautiful book in the works. If you don’t know her, get to know her.

Okay, so.

I was a latchkey kid raised on Oprah. This is my memoir and my truth. So the revived experience of learning about life from television is transcending me, and Jerrod Carmichael is the host. The deep look in his particular experience with gay life with an art/literary bent?! I need a 24-hour livestream. I need emersion in this shit. I need a life inside his. I’ll abandon it all to know this world.

As an anxious/disorganized attacher, I can’t stop thinking about Michael. We don’t know him; we know Jerrod. Jerrod is intentionally playing his own messy, human villain or something in this show, so we don’t know Mike’s part in the cheating and lying and evasion. A note: to look at all this strictly relationally is highly limiting, but I’m speaking here as a viewer, not necessarily a critic (though I DO judge, OUF). I just want to know more about this little white gay writing a novel at Iowa being flown out by his famous beautiful charming hilarious toxic? boyf every weekend.

The last episode gave us more than we’ve ever gotten of Michael, including him in his underwear, which is not insignificant, given the lead poster for the show (see above).

We’re getting a view into his complexity as well, rather than just a witness and recipient of Jerrod’s choices. It all has me desperate for more.

They don’t read this part in the show, but in this letter, Michael writes, “I never thought I would be loved in this way because I had figured myself undeserving of it. ‘Rejection left a void,’ carved out for —fteen years. You are unknotting — you’ve already -ndone — an old pain that I can now live —thout”

I have THOUGHTS. But I’ll leave it to the poll.

And that’s my nonsense for today. There is so much incredible writing to read about this show. And it will give you big questions. Highly recommend.

Grateful, as always.

Thank you for reading, for being, hope to see you on the webs or this very Saturday. <3

Katie

The judges really have me distracted this season though, especially the different ways they deal with being wrong, with working together, or not, with disappointing the bakers when they keep them from winning thousands of dollars.

Sherry Cola brought the right dose of grace to the stage I think. At one point she told a baker, I’m proud of you, after she guessed wrong. I hate being wrong. Good for her.

I most identified with Liza Koshy’s maniacal responses to being right and wrong. But overall, Ego Nwodim’s unbelievable accuracy explains her success. Savvy, notices the details, all about the business of the task at hand. I’ve taken notes. I also really liked her boots.

Anyway, I’ve had time to watch the entire season because I’ve been sick with some mysterious non-transferable (I promise you) viral thing. I believe I caught it from the man open-mouth hacking into the plane air on the way back to Seattle from Tokyo two weeks ago, and when I tell you I don’t know what to do with my anger and confusion at his choices, it comes from a deep, dark place in me. Regardless, I’ve had ongoing viral issues since 2019 and at this point, I’m ready to only eat bananas and hang upside down every morning if that’s what it takes to stop feeling sick so often. Shout out to those chronically ill or who have limitations in their bodies they don’t understand or anyone with impatience around having a cold. Mortality is so intense sometimes.

Speaking of, I had a big birthday. The feels are that I’m relieved to be on the other side. 39 is a torture of a year and a 40th birthday party is like the last mile in a marathon. It’s all over, I’m still alive, bless, let’s keep it pushing.

NFNR News

The next reading is April 25, 2024 at Charlie’s Queer Books and if you miss this line up, I’m telling you, it’ll be a tragedy. Diana Khoi Nguyen rarely shares her nonfiction, though it’s feeling like maybe she’s got a book or project in the works. This event will be a peek into the magic she’s making quietly while promoting her new book of poems, Root Fractures. The poems will be for sale, but the sneak peek will not, other than the ticket price, so get while the getting’s good.

Nicole Hardy is coming with some new and also funny material, and I’m looking forward to seeing her on stage. M Freeman has been making the rounds with their spouse, Anne de Marcken, for her new novel, It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over, so it’ll be a treat to hear their own work, which includes media and short film, acting as an English translator for priests in local detention centers, and a short story collection, Meeting Magdalene, which will be available for sale. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore will bring that voice of hers, and those stories of hers, and you can buy her latest book, Touching the Art, a memoir about intergenerational trauma and fine art, one of her many must-reads. Marcus Harrison Green is doing a lot these days, so we’re lucky to have him between launching his book Readying to Rise, serving as publisher and founder of the essential South Seattle Emerald, winning awards including the Seattle Human Rights Commissions’ Individual Human Rights Leader Award in 2020, and, no biggie, publisher of the new Hinton Publishing, which just released their first book, Still True by the great Reagan Jackson, which I highly recommend.

This is going a bit long. I’ll have more on these rest of these writers in the next round.

What I’m saying is, you don’t want to miss this. Get your ticket, support me and these readers and Charlie’s Queer Books, and hear work you won’t hear anywhere else. <3

If you want a live stream, let me know in the comments or via email or text me or whatever. I’ve only had a couple of people request it, but if there’s a crew of at-home watchers, I’ll set it all up for you.

In other news

I’m over here working on building a repeatable event out of Nonfiction for No Reason. The response in Tokyo was so warm and the great Leo Elizabeth Takada, along with a few of the other readers at the event, are pumped to keep it going. So I’m documenting and articulating and enumerating. I love making this series. By the way, did you know Leo Elizabeth Takada translated the Oscar-nominated film, Perfect Days? I just saw it this week, and it was the best movie-in-the-afternoon trip I’ve had in a long time. Leo is a poet, and will make one hell of a host when NFNR Tokyo launches for real. <3

If you love NFNR too, please become a paying subscriber to this newsletter. You can also donate any old time you like for any old amount you like. It’s been a goal to pay each writer $100 per reading, and I’m working toward getting there. We just got another grant from Seattle Office of Arts and Culture for $1,500, which is wonderful and a fraction of the annual budget I hope to reach for the writers, the spaces that support us, and for my time and software needed to keep this thing going. You guys are how we’ll make it last. Let me know how much you love it, and if a free subscription, sharing the news, writing a note, commenting, etc. is how you do it, that means so, so much, too.

And thank you thank you thank you to those who already support this little baby train. Birdie rests easier at night knowing you’re out there. More soon.

Katie

This is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading, please become a paid subscriber. I’d love to send you special, surprise, secret-ish content like class discounts, access to comments, and recorded readings from Nonfiction for No Reason.

Please share all this good news on the socials, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. And thank you, as always, for reading.

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My partner is just enough older than me that Madonna is a big deal to them. A solid member of Gen X, they’ve regaled me with tales of how ‘80s and ‘90s made queerness mainstream and gave her baby gay self a *somewhat distorted* mirror. I’m far enough behind as a geriatric millenial, that Madonna was already sort of an elder by the time I was around. On MTV, she held the clout of an established icon and served cockiness and attitude as she were entitled to the room she took up, rather than fighting for it.

I think there are reasons I don’t like Madonna [GASP] that are deeper than I care to go in this newsletter, but I will say that her blatant appropriation of a myriad of cultures is what’s earned her so much attention. Did she also pave the way for Beyonce? Sure, she even featured a video of the Queen saying so herself in her show, which is still touring.

Did she love and at times share lives with other icons (Prince, Tupac, Micheal Jackson, even if as friends) of our time as an equal? Yes, and I trust she provided something of value for those men in return. What I’m trying to say, very poorly, is that I respect her. There were moments at this show in 2024 when, surrounded by young and writhing dancers, backlit, and pinched into just the right corset and heels, that she is still the icon she was forty years ago.

I took this picture because the light was incredible, the performance of fame really thoughtful, and the way she is always reaching out to her own body and her dancers’ bodies kind of curious and compelling.

But then, she fell.

Or, she was dropped. Either way, she lay on the floor afterward for several counts, then laughed into the mic. Later, she said to another dancer during the same song, “YOU’RE not going to drop me, are you?” I don’t know what you hear, but that sounds like a threat, and a public one. Maybe it was just a joke, but from MADONNA, I’d only be terrified.

I turn 40 this month. It has me thinking about death and legacy and aging and womanhood and things. As I did when I was a little girl, I still look to these superstars for examples of how to be. I think about Gaga, and her big heart and her own brands of appropriation, now mostly acknowledged, while Madonna is putting on a global show in which the most exciting moments come from ballroom dancers, and they don’t even go all the way THERE. Of course, Beyonce did the same for the Renaissance tour, and honestly, I still don’t think it was all the way anywhere because her stage is just too big, metaphorically, and ballroom isn’t her house, either. And yet, with Beyonce, it always feels like a generous celebration of what she calls in, rather than a kind of self-conscious, campy, tangential, “I know about this, too!” which is what it felt like at Madonna’s show.

Every time I talk trash about her though, I immediately feel guilt, then reverence remembering what she’s done, how fabulous she made 40 look in the early 2000s, how bad and how joyful Ray of Light was, how incredible so much of the show was, even while she was painfully off-key, per usual, the ENTIRE time. I can’t stop. I just don’t like her!

Regardless, I’m thinking about what makes for graceful aging, and what really… falls flat. And if Madonna can fall in late-stage capitalism in which polar bears swim for nine days to find an ice cap to rest on, I guess it doesn’t matter if I fall, and find some embarrassing way to get back up, too. As my wisened partner was trying to tell me, maybe the power with Madonna has always been that seeing her do it means we can do it. And while Beyonce tries to give us that, it simply doesn’t feel true. She’s too good.

NFNR IS GOING TO TOKYO

Can you believe? I cannot. We have 120 RSVP’d for an event I thought would gather 30-50. I’m learning a ton, it’s a scramble, and it is not possible without the writers that make these events so wildly good.

To speak briefly of the accomplishments among these writers, Kanako Nishi just won the Yomiuri Literary Prize for her memoir in essays (not yet translated but we'll hear an excerpt in Japanese and English at this event!), and Kyoko Nakajima's new novel Urahagusa Fudoki comes out March 5, the day before the event.

If you want to watch the event live, I’m working on getting YouTube on board. A subscription will help! There’s also already a video of Vanessa Friedman, deputy editor of Hey Alma and utterly delightful human, on there from the NFNR in Portland on July 8, 2023, reading a heart wrenching essay called “Home Videos.” I had to pull myself together after that 8 minutes of all guts.

NFNR is growing.

I have some treats in store. I’ve invested in some serious recording equipment. I have some workshops in mind. People keep suggesting new ways to let more people in on this magical train, and I’m listening. Send me your ideas. Plop ‘em in the comments. And in the meantime, help us grow in whatever way you can.

Subscribe to the YouTube channel.

Donate on the website.

Become a paying subscriber.

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But mostly please stay well, ready for more. I can’t wait for what’s coming. <3

Katie

Thanks to my supremely cool younger sister, I got my new favorite vintage jean jacket with fuzzy lining and silky quilted sleeve lining for ‘90s prices, i.e. not more than $30. Like a good gay, I also bought two flannels that will truly stand the test of this very serious winter we’re having, and I feel blessed in all kinds of ways.

As promised, I did throw a reading at my old house, where none of current family live, where strangers in fact live with incredibly valuable and impressive art on the walls, and they were extremely kind and welcoming. I did try to warn them that us writers of nonfiction would very likely say things not appropriate for their two children, but she said they could take it. Still, Chris Belcher started us off deep in sex and sex and touching for money, and soon the kiddos were ushered upstairs. One of many, many moments in which I felt myself split in pieces for all the roles I was playing: gracious guest, welcoming host, daughter and likely not ever a mother, grown woman, writer… my allegiances remain with Chris, though I appreciate that the hostess of chaotic good never did clutch pearls or throw us all out, which she very well could have done in her own damn house.

This is a free weekly newsletter. If you love reading, please become a paid subscriber. I’d love to send you special, surprise, secret-ish content like class discounts, access to comments, and recorded readings from Nonfiction for No Reason.

Please share all this good news on the socials, forward it to someone who might benefit, or text it to a friend. And thank you, as always, for reading.

UPGRADE TO PAID

Anyway, I’m working through the layers of that experience, the siphoning of selves I was doing, the gratitude I felt, the sadness, the spinning, the absence and presence of my dead mom (sorry, heavy!), the fragmenting of identity perhaps explained by the presence of my childhood friend and his parents, my sister and her oldest friend from childhood who lived in the house for years, a line up of readers I love and whom I’ve mostly never met, L.A. strangers, the owners of our old house, and many, many ghosts and memories whizzing past with every bang of the knocker on our front door and clomp of steps up the stairs. I’m getting dizzy. So let’s move on.

As usual, Melissa Febos’s workshop went so fucking deep, you guys. Just as I thought I was moving on from this wild trip and had steadied my emotional ship, this woman was asking questions like:

And:

I mean. After all this time with such similar themes swirling in the storm of my body, I’d hope to have answers for these. But my answers have changed, and as my brilliant friend reminded me this week, “Maybe it’s not about the answers, but about the questions… ugh, sorry.” Whatever, I share them with you because maybe you’ll get something out of them. And will say also that Corporeal Writing is lovely and ruthless and I never forget the classes I take there.

Anyway, anyone seen American Fiction yet? Why isn’t it as easy as it’s been in the past to just go to a movie on any given afternoon or evening? Is this aging? I can’t possibly be that busy.

This was a quick and dirty one, but I wanted you all to know I’m thinking of you, to share some other things I’m thinking about, and I’d like to hear what you’re thinking about, too. So I’m gonna open up comments on this one. Please share.

NFNR

Speaking of sharing, I’m working on organizing a Nonfiction for No Reason while I’m in Japan this March, specifically in Tokyo. If you know of some incredible nonfiction writers or translators there, or the perfect space for an English reading, please let me know!

I’m also planning readings in Seattle for April, May, August or October, and November. Plus, hopefully one in New York (as in City) in September. Let me know if there are people you’d love to hear, new books I should know about that need a stage, writers that don’t get enough shine, etc., etc.

Grateful, as always.

Thank you for for reading, for being.

Katie