Kathryn Kulpa: A Conversation
I first met Kathryn Kulpa in 2021 when I enrolled in her workshop AFTERBURN: The Art of Flash Revision through Cleaver Magazine and found her critiques encouraging, instructive, and thorough. I subsequently enrolled in four more workshops the following year. Kathryn’s approach to writing workshops is very hands on, giving advice on how to sharpen the story and turn it into a publishable piece. Dozens of writers give her and her workshops credit for the inspiration and fine-tuning of stories now published in literary journals.
This month, I caught up with her during her book tour for her recent flash fiction collection, Cooking Tips for the Demon-Haunted, the winner of the New Rivers Press Chapbook Contest. — AMA
1. Your first publication was a short story in Seventeen Magazine almost 30 years ago. I was surprised to learn that Sylvia Plath submitted nearly 50 pieces before her first short story, "And Summer Will Not Come Again," was accepted and published in the August 1950 issue. Tell us a bit about your publication experience with that magazine.
Well, now I feel old! I still think of the 90s as ‘about ten years ago,’ in my personal chronology. I was also surprised to hear that Sylvia Plath had that many stories rejected—I’ve always thought of her as the golden girl, at least on the outside. My Seventeen story was my first submission there, and really the first story I was serious about sending out. I’d sent it to other places, including the Atlantic, and, of all places, Playgirl (!), where it was often “too young” or “not right for our readers.” It was held for a really long time at Sassy magazine, which felt like the perfect fit. They kept saying it was still under consideration, but I got tired of waiting (good thing, because they folded soon after!) and sent it to Seventeen and they accepted it right away.
2. If you could give guidance to your younger writer self, what would it be?
Be patient! I kept setting these artificial goals for myself—I have to have something published before I graduate high school, or I’m not a writer—I have to have something published before I graduate college, or I’m not a writer. Age-based, and all about getting external recognition. And it’s so hard not to want that, because that is what society tells you makes you a “real” writer. And then I would get so discouraged because I didn’t meet some arbitrary goal, rather than trusting the inner voice that knew when I’d written something good.
3. Someone only needs to follow your Instagram account to recognize your love for felines which makes me wonder, if you were a cat, what would you likely write about?
Ha! An evil empire of mice, foiled by a cat commando, maybe? My cat Smudge, who is normally indoor only, got outside recently and was missing for over a week. I spotted him slinking across the yard, watched over by a deer. I wish he could tell me what he was up to during that time and what made him leave the tribe of Cervidae and return home—that’s a story I’d love to write.
4. Your fiction has been published in numerous top tier literary journals, Smokelong Quarterly, Milk Candy Review, Fictive Dream, Ghost Parachute, Bending Genres, to name a few. Is there a specific journal which you’ve attempted but find is still out of your reach?
Yes, a few! When I wrote longer-form fiction, I used to batter myself against the Atlantic and New Yorker. I kept getting these “this is brilliant, BUT” notes from C. Michael Curtis at the Atlantic, and they made me gnash my teeth in frustration yet kept me going, in a weird way, when I wasn’t getting any other kind of notice. More recently, with flash, my “impossible dream” journals are The Sun, Cincinnati Review, Indiana Review, and Fractured Lit.
5. You earned a Masters in Library Science and currently work as a librarian in two Rhode Island libraries. As a writer, does the thought—Holy cow, hundreds and hundreds of books! How could I think I could add mine to these shelves?—ever creep into your head?
Knowing the realities of how libraries work—it’s not so much getting on the shelf as staying on the shelf that’s the real accomplishment. The shelves of used bookstores and library book sale tables are sagging in the middle with yesterday’s bestsellers no one wants. Not to mention all the weird niche titles, like “Here’s a cozy mystery about a team of crime-solving sister wives!” I’d love to write one classic book, or even a single story, like Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” that stands the test of time and gets republished in new editions and anthologies to be discovered by future generations.
6. Your stories are truly compelling (examples follow this interview). What dark corner of your mind creates these twisted tales?
I’m not sure, but I do know my 10-year-old self is squee-ing at being asked about dark corners and twisted tales! As a kid, I used to read collections of ghost and horror stories and save them to tell at slumber parties. I once put together a collection of adapted scary stories called “CAUTION! DO NOT READ AFTER DARK!,” which of course was exactly designed to be read after dark. As a young teen, I read everything I could find by Poe, Lovecraft, and Stephen King. I didn’t really think those influences crept into my own writing, though, at least in an overt way, but when I was putting Cooking Tips for the Demon-Haunted together I realized how much darkness is in my stories. So much so that I had to reject things: “Well, this werewolf story is spooky, but it’s not really ‘haunted.’ I’ll have to save it for a ‘monster’ collection.”
7. What would I find in your fridge right now that would surprise me?
I’m afraid to look! I don’t want it to jump out and surprise me.
8. Describe your first memory of truly owning the feeling of being a writer.
Well, getting that Seventeen story accepted was definitely one of those moments, but I’m going to go back even farther than that. I was about 13 or 14 years old, and my parents were away so I was spending the night at my aunt’s house. I had my notebook with me, but no pen, and in the middle of the night, when everyone was asleep, I became possessed by an idea: I had to write this story! I looked all over for a pen and couldn’t find one. I finally found a pencil—but it was all worn down, and I couldn’t find a pencil sharpener, so I actually took some scissors and whittled the pencil to a point and wrote the story with this dull old pencil, and I remember it being three or four in the morning and having such a feeling of triumph—I had DONE it!
9. During the months of September and October, Does It Have Pockets is hosting a Flash Fiction Contest. You’ve worked as an editor for Newport Review, Merlyn’s Pen, and now for Cleaver Magazine, tell me, what elements do you consider necessary for compelling flash fiction?
A voice—as distinct from story, or plot, or even characters—that holds you and won’t let go. And I know voice is such a hard-to-define element, but it’s absolutely essential. It’s when you start reading and immediately trust the writer to take you wherever they’re going to take you.
10. Is there a question I should have asked you but didn’t? Anything about yourself, your life, something about your writing or writing journey that you'd like to share with our readers?
Just that finding a writing community can be such a lifeline, and it’s one of the best reasons to take a writing workshop—finding people who get you, who understand that artistic obsession and help inspire you to keep going and make good work even better. My first writing group grew out of a class I took with Jincy Willett, and now when I teach workshops and my students say they’re going to keep exchanging work on their own, I feel so happy at the thought of all these overlapping circles, these incredible writers supporting each other.
11. We so appreciate sharing your thoughts and experiences with our readers. Where can we find more of your work?
Thank you so much for asking! I have links to a lot of them that were published online on my website, which is kathrynkulpa.com, and links to buy print collections and anthologies are also there.
Cooking Tips for the Demon Haunted
(after “Self-Portrait” by Rosa Rolanda)
Keep those demons at bay, is what Mama always said, for they will try and try to find a way in, and they are many and they are everywhere. Even now, standing in the kitchen as I am, a demon is beside me. If a bird flies into your window and leaves a trail of feathers and blood, it is a demon bringing bad luck; if white roses grow where you planted azaleas, a demon sowed the seed; if the paint separates and the color will not fix, a demon dipped his brush; if the beans sour in the soup, a demon stirred the pot; if the rice burns in the pan, a demon fanned the flame; if a young woman twists and turns on a high wire, rope of braid hanging down, she is a demon in pleasing form and that rope is the noose she holds for your husband, or for you. Too many demons crowd my head; they snap and fly like hot grease on a cast iron frying pan, spanging through the sky, leaping and multiplying, they are all busy going somewhere and here I stand as the water boils away, leaving a smell of brimstone. Are you feeling well, child? Mama asks, her fingers cool against my forehead. Surely this is Mama’s hand, the hand I’ve always known, so white and dry and cold.
Originally published in Ekphrastic Review, May 13, 2022.
The Last Thing She Ever Wore
If you thought the clothes you put on in the morning would be the last ones you’d ever wear, you’d choose them more carefully. I would have.
Last seen in a purple t-shirt, jeans, and black Chuck Taylors. May or may not have been wearing a rainbow loom friendship bracelet.
Not, for the record. I took it off weeks ago. And the shirt was more violet than purple. Violet like twilight, which it was, and the end of April, but already summer-warm, and I was zinging, vibrating, every raw nerve brimming with want: to go somewhere, to do something, and my cousin’s confirmation party was not that thing, and Hannah had said we could meet at the skate park later and I was asking my mother, one more time, when we could leave and she said Get lost!
So I did. Slammed my glass of off-brand orange soda on the table and walked out the back door, past the adults talking their boring talk, past the little kids and their dumb party games. I walked to the end of my cousin’s street and kept walking, wondering when they’d miss me, when my mother would be sorry she’d pushed me away. Get lost! I walked until I no longer knew the names of streets, cut through backyards like a spy, seeing the blue lights of TVs through picture windows, hearing lawn sprinklers, thinking how people were carrying on with their ordinary lives, barely awake, barely alive, and this was not the life I wanted. I wanted to ride dragons; I wanted to find lost cities; I wanted to climb a mountain peak in the sharp, red outback, under a sky of a billion stars. I wanted something more, something I couldn’t name.
I pulled a pink flower from a hedge with thick, waxy leaves and breathed in its strange, spicy smell. I tucked the flower behind my ear like a dark-haired girl in a painting I’d seen in a book in the school library. The girl was topless, or would have been, but someone had inked in a bikini top and written Woo! Woo!, and I swayed down the road like I was that girl, crowds of people saying Woo! Woo! in my head; I wanted to be a bad girl, a wild girl; no one had any idea of who I was or what I could become—so of course I got into that car. Got in with my own two feet. The path forked and I took the path that was all wrong, the path the lost girls take, but what other path could I have taken? In that warm violet twilight, with new grass bending under my feet, the music from that car pulsing past me, slowing down, that man leaning out and saying how hot I was, and I was on fire, I was so alive in that moment, every cell in my body tingling, waiting for something, finally, to happen: so alive, so alive.
Originally published in Monkeybicycle, April 29, 2016.
Lights Out : Zelda at Highland Hospital
It’s almost nine o’clock. Time for the night nurse to come and tuck me into bed, and I’ll make a show of yawning, of being dull and slow as most of us are, as they want us all to be. A placid vessel on a tranquilized sea. If I’m quiet, and wait until she’s nodded off over her nurse-romance novel, dreaming of the handsome doctor-lover never to come for her, the old goat, I can slip out, and walk in the night air, and smell the jacaranda blossoms that almost smell like home—like home and the wide back porch where we drank sloe gin on long summer nights, after my parents had gone to bed, and kept our voices hushed, or tried to. My laugh that you loved, and the little green notebook where you’d write down things I’d say.
Was I your muse? Did I amuse? My feet were never still; my toes still tapped out the rhythms of dirty jazz, all those barracks dances and the juke joints we’d stop at, later and drunker. Mama never minded how late I came home; she’d been a belle in her youth, and liked to know that somewhere young men fought their sheets in uneasy dreams and called my name, as they’d once called hers. One night, on a dare, you sipped champagne from my pale-pearl silk slipper, and it always smelled faintly winy after that, a smell that reminded me of moonlight, and sin, and you.
But I’m barefoot now, and slip lightly over the cold tile floors. If I’m caught out after hours one more time they’ll tie me to the bed at night, and I’ll be like poor old Elsie, with her red-chafed wrists and rubber continence panties, howling through the long nights, like the lunatic that she of course is, that we all, of course, are.
I never wanted to be saved. I never wanted to be safe. I still don’t. I let them take my days. The nights are still mine. Only in these dangerous moments of solitude can I remember myself. “One of those fast, dangerous girls”—a murmur of talk, overheard at the nurses’ station. And for a moment I let myself imagine they were talking about me.
This, now, is my life. I rise early in the morning, so they won’t suspect. Lying in bed past eight, wishing to be alone, refusing to eat: all these things are suspect.
I lob tennis balls back and forth to a tired attendant. My head throbs from relentless sunshine. I force a smile and pray for rain.
I long to lie in the shaded grass, barefoot, a tall glass of sweet tea beside me and a book to read, all in a lazy afternoon. But sloth is a sign of—something. I sit in a straight-backed chair. I pretend to listen to a lecture on home economics and the virtues of Victory Gardening, and dream of the French dancer, Emma Livry, turned into a torch by the footlights. Still she turned, layers of tulle, magnificent in flame, to finish her grand jeté.
She never regretted beauty.
Emma Livry. It took me two days to remember her name. I’m not allowed my dance books. Dancing is dangerous; it might “trigger an obsessive episode.” I’m not allowed to practice at the barre. I wear supportive cotton stockings. Me!
I’m sure my knees must weep.
I write Emma’s name in a matchbook, so I won’t forget her again. Matches are contraband, of course. Writing is discouraged, except for therapeutic exercises. A sign of neurosis, grandiosity.
I can’t be you, Scott, no matter how often I let you be me.
I slip past the tennis courts, past the neat rows of seedlings ready to carry us the last mile to victory. Tomatoes and broad beans can well, our lecturer told us.
But I am not content with a vegetable love. I will not plant my feet and root. I will not rot. I will not die on the vine.
I am not your ego, not your twin, not the girl you could have been.
I am tinder. I am tulle.
I am spark. I will fly.
Originally published in the anthology, Up, Do: Flash Fiction by Women Writers (Spider Road Press), February 15, 2014.
