Kathryn Scanlan

Scanlan was born in Iowa in 1980.{{cite web |title=Windham Campbell Prizes: Kathryn Scanlan |url=https://windhamcampbell.org/festival/2024/recipients/scanlan-kathryn |website=Windham Campbell |access-date=1 February 2025}} She grew up in rural eastern Iowa.{{cite web |title=Kathryn Scanlan: Gordon Burn prize winner on pushing the boundaries of fiction |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/08/kathryn-scanlan-gordon-burn-prize-winner-on-pushing-the-boundaries-of-fiction |website=The Guardian |access-date=1 February 2025}}{{cite web |title=Interview with Kathryn Scanlan |url=https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/interview-with-kathryn-scanlan |website=The White Review |access-date=1 February 2025 |date=April 2023}} Her mother's family were farmers, her father's family racehorse trainers.{{cite web |title=Kathryn Scanlan's Violent Compression |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/09/12/kathryn-scanlans-violent-compression |website=The New Yorker |access-date=1 February 2025 |date=5 September 2022}}

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

She lives in Los Angeles.

Scanlan's first published short story was "Line", which appeared in NOON Annual in 2009.{{cite web |title=2009 Back Edition |url=https://noonannual.com/edition/2009/ |website=NOON Annual |access-date=1 February 2025}}{{cite web |title=An Interview with Kathryn Scanlan |url=https://www.thebeliever.net/logger/an-interview-with-kathryn-scanlan/ |website=The Believer |access-date=1 February 2025 |date=10 September 2019}} NOON founder and editor Diane Williams became a mentor for Scanlan and NOON published more of Scanlan's fiction throughout the 2010s,{{cite web |title=2015 Back Edition |url=https://noonannual.com/edition/2015/ |website=NOON Annual |access-date=1 February 2025}}{{cite web |title=2019 Back Edition |url=https://noonannual.com/edition/2019/ |website=NOON Annual |access-date=1 February 2025}} including excerpts from the material that would later became her first book, Aug 9 – Fog.{{cite web |title=2011 Back Edition |url=https://noonannual.com/edition/2011/ |website=NOON Annual |access-date=1 February 2025}} Scanlan's story "The Old Mill" was published in The Iowa Review{{cite journal |last1=Scanlan |first1=Kathryn |title=The Old Mill |journal=The Iowa Review |date=Winter 2010 |volume=40 |issue=3}} and won the 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Prize.{{cite web |title=Recent Iowa Review Award Winners |url=https://iowareview.org/content/recent-iowa-review-award-winners |website=Iowa Review |access-date=1 February 2025}} Other stories appeared in Tin House, from which she received a scholarship to attend the 2013 Tin House Summer Workshop,{{cite web |title=Colonial Revival |url=https://tinhouse.com/colonial-revival/ |website=Tin House |access-date=1 February 2025}} Fence,{{cite journal |last1=Scanlan |first1=Kathryn |title=The Dominant Animal |journal=Fence |date=Spring 2016 |volume=17 |issue=1}} and American Short Fiction.{{cite journal |last1=Scanlan |first1=Kathryn |title=The Hungry Valley |journal=American Short Fiction |date=Winter 2016 |volume=19 |issue=61}}

Scanlan published her first full-length work, Aug 9 – Fog, in 2019. The book is based on a diary that Scanlan found at an estate auction.{{cite web |title=Kathryn Scanlan remixes a found diary and T Fleischmann deconstructs a memoir |url=https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-review-t-fleischmann-kathryn-scanlan-20190529-story.html |website=Los Angeles Times |access-date=1 February 2025}}{{cite web |title=Aug 9—Fog |url=https://stingingfly.org/review/aug-9-fog/ |website=The White Review |access-date=1 February 2025}} The diary belonged to an elderly Iowan woman, and covers the years 1968 to 1972.{{cite web |title=Author or subject? |url=https://www.the-tls.co.uk/literature/fiction/kick-the-latch-kathryn-scanlan-book-review-nina-allan |website=The TLS |access-date=1 February 2025}}{{cite web |last1=Scanlan |first1=Kathryn |title=The Anonymous Diary |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/11/find-a-grave/ |website=Paris Review |access-date=1 February 2025 |date=11 June 2019}} Scanlan selected fragments from the 400 pages of the diary and rearranged them to form a narrative arc, ordered in five seasonal sections. In an essay published in The Paris Review in 2019, Scanlan described how she later tracked down the diarist on Find A Grave and found out that she had died at the age of 95, four years after the diary ends.

Scanlan's collection of short stories, The Dominant Animal, was published in 2020. Containing 40 very short stories, it focuses on the relationship between humans and the natural world, especially animals.{{cite web |title=The Dominant Animal by Kathryn Scanlan review – deeply, darkly enjoyable |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/06/the-dominant-animal-by-kathryn-scanlan-review-40-dark-and-unsentimental-tales |website=The Guardian |access-date=1 February 2025}}{{cite web |title=L.A. author Kathryn Scanlan wins $175,000 literary prize: 'Baffling and wonderful' |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2024-04-02/kathryn-scanlan-literary-windham-campbell-prize-los-angeles-writer |website=Los Angeles Times |access-date=1 February 2025}} The collection continues Scanlan's mixing of genres, with some stories reworked from found texts and conversations, including an old book about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and a conversation with a bus driver.

Scanlan's second novel, Kick the Latch, was published in 2022. It is based on interviews Scanlan conducted with Iowa-born horse trainer Sonia, a family friend. These were carried out in person and then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, over the phone. The interview material is extensively reworked to form a linear narrative of the trainer's life, from birth to retirement, rendered in short chapters arranged in numbered sections.{{cite web |title=A Productive Tension: An Interview with Kathryn Scanlan |url=https://southwestreview.com/a-productive-tension-an-interview-with-kathryn-scanlan/ |website=Southwest Review |access-date=1 February 2025}}{{cite web |title=Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan review – straight from the horse trainer's mouth |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/22/kick-the-latch-by-kathryn-scanlan-review-straight-from-the-horse-trainers-mouth |website=The Guardian |access-date=1 February 2025}}

In March 2024, Kick the Latch won the Gordon Burn Prize.{{cite web |title=Kathryn Scanlan wins Gordon Burn prize for novel Kick the Latch |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/07/kathryn-scanlan-wins-gordon-burn-prize-for-novel-kick-the-latch |website=The Guardian |access-date=1 February 2025}}{{cite web |title=Gordon Burn Prize: Kathryn Scanlan |url=https://newwritingnorth.com/gordon-burn-prize/kathryn-scanlan/ |website=New Writing North |access-date=1 February 2025}}

In April 2024, Scanlan was awarded the $175,000 Windham-Campbell Prize.{{cite web |title=Eight writers win 'freedom and time to write' with $175,000 Windham-Campbell prizes |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/02/eight-writers-win-freedom-and-time-to-write-with-175000-windham-campbell-prizes |website=The Guardian |access-date=1 February 2025}}

Scanlan has also published art criticism and essays in Artforum{{cite web |title=Uta Barth |url=https://www.artforum.com/events/uta-barth-9-251248/ |website=Artforum |access-date=1 February 2025}}{{cite web |title=Louise Nevelson |url=https://www.artforum.com/events/louise-nevelson-16-249385/ |website=Artforum |access-date=1 February 2025}} and Another Gaze.{{cite web |title=Twenty-Eight Portraits of Linda Manz (1961–2020) |url=https://www.anothergaze.com/twenty-eight-portraits-linda-manz-1961-2020/ |website=Another Gaze |access-date=1 February 2025}}{{cite web |title=There is the sound, too, of a ticking clock: A Time-based Reading of Anne Charlotte Robertson's 'Five Year Diary'|url=https://www.anothergaze.com/sound-ticking-clock-time-based-reading-anne-charlotte-robertsons-five-year-diary/ |website=Another Gaze |access-date=1 February 2025}}

• 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Arts and Letters Award: Literature{{cite web |title=All Awards |url=https://www.artsandletters.org/awards |website=Arts and Letters |access-date=1 February 2025}}
• 2024 Gordon Burn Prize
• 2024 Windham-Campbell Prize

• Aug 9 – Fog, MCD/FSG, 2019. {{ISBN|978-0374106874}}
• The Dominant Animal, MCD x FSG Originals, 2020. {{ISBN|978-0374538293}}
• Kick the Latch, New Directions, 2022. {{ISBN|978-0811232005}}

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• [https://www.kathrynscanlan.com/ Kathryn Scanlan official website]

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Category:21st-century American novelists

Category:21st-century American short story writers

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:1980 births

Category:Living people