20th Anniversary Author Spotlight: Kate Cayley
Our 20th-anniversary celebrations continue with another Author Spotlight interview. Today, we’re shining a light on award-winning writer Kate Cayley. As longtime fans and champions of Kate’s work, it’s been our sincere honour to publish two books with her: the poetry collection Lent and a tenth-anniversary edition of her Trillium Award winning story collection How You Were Born. In this Q&A, Kate shares what it means to be part of our author family, a title from fellow Book*hug Emily Anglin that has been a touchstone book for her, and thoughtful words on what it means to be published by an independent press. Happy reading!
B*: What does being part of the Book*hug Press author family mean to you? Feel free to share an anecdote, reflection, or backstory about your publishing experience.
KC: It’s meant a home, in the sense that I feel like my work is loved, that people have my back, and that I’m taken seriously on my own terms, but not too seriously. From the first time working with Book*hug (on my third poetry collection, Lent), I felt I was in a conversation, ongoing, interesting, with my publishers, who were tireless in bringing books to readers in a fickle and inattentive landscape.
B*: Can you share another title from the Book*hug Press catalogue that has left a lasting impression on you as a reader? A book that has been a touchstone book for you, one that you found meaningful, interesting, or simply loved.
KC: The Third Person by Emily Anglin! These are haunting, deeply strange stories that sneak up on you. I read this book six years ago and have yet to find anything that more perfectly evokes the peculiar feeling of standing alone on a street at night, passing by a window and wondering about the life inside. Which is one of my favourite things in life. And difficult to get at with such precision in fiction, even though that is what fiction, really, does for us. Makes us wonder, glancingly, about other people’s lives.
B*: When we see more large publisher consolidations and huge conglomerates dominating the marketplace, what does it mean to you to be published by an independent publisher like Book*hug Press?
KC: It means survival! It means that work that isn’t going to make it to the bestseller lists and doesn’t involve a murder, a romance, a thrilling family secret, or some variety of trauma plot can still find at least a few readers. And it means that some people are trying really hard to make sure that the local and the idiosyncratic can find a place, too.
