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| photo: Kambui Olujimi | |
Kerri Schlottman's writing has placed second in the Dillydoun International Fiction Prize, been longlisted for the Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction and was a 2021 University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize semifinalist. For the past 20 years, Schlottman has worked to support artists, performers and writers in creating new projects, most recently at Creative Capital in New York City, where she helped fund projects by authors Paul Beatty, Maggie Nelson, Percival Everett and Jesse Ball. Her debut novel is Tell Me One Thing (Regal House Publishing, January 31, 2023).
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
Tell Me One Thing is the story of a provocative photograph, the struggling artist who takes it, and its young and troubled subject.
On your nightstand now:
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh, which I haven't yet started but it's next up. That book was recommended to me by a fellow author because of a novel I'm currently working on. Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett: I'm only a couple of chapters into the book but already in awe at how she skillfully uses first-person plural, which is so hard to do well. How We Live Is How We Die by Pema Chödrön, who's an American Tibetan Buddhist and a nun: I'm about halfway through. I find her writing equally terrifying and illuminating. (I mean, that title. Whew.)
Favorite book when you were a child:
When I was very young, I was fully obsessed with Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman. I read that book all the time. As a pre-teen, I liked the Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin and the Sweet Valley High series, written by Francine Pascal and a bunch of ghostwriters. I also sometimes read the books my mom had around the house, so I had an early introduction to Tom Clancy, John Grisham and Danielle Steel.
Your top five authors:
Maggie Nelson, Mohsin Hamid, Jenny Offill, Jhumpa Lahiri and Joan Didion. Each of these authors has educated me as a writer in some way with their incredible talents, and I'm very grateful for that.
Book you've faked reading:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and, to be honest, many of the classics. I've been telling myself for years that I'll eventually read them, but I never do.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Abundance by Jakob Guanzon, which is a painfully important novel about economic inequality told in beautiful prose. I wish everyone would read this book and that we would then have a national discussion about poverty in America.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I recently bought a special edition from McNally Jackson Books of The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector that has small, shiny stars all over it, and I'm obsessed with it. I like the story, too, but the cover is where the magic's at.
Book you hid from your parents:
None! I grew up in the '80s when parents had no idea what their children were doing.
Book that changed your life:
Suicide Blonde by Darcey Steinke made me want to leave the blue-collar town I grew up in and move to a big city, which I ended up doing a few years later when I came to New York City. Reading that book felt like someone was telling me something about myself. It's so gorgeous and raw. I re-read it from time to time, and it never loses its specialness.
Favorite line from a book:
I'm going to cheat a bit and give two lines, but they're so good. From Thomas McGuane's Panama:
"When they build a shopping center over an old salt marsh, the seabirds sometimes circle the same place for a year or more, coming back to check daily, to see if there isn't some little chance those department stores and pharmacies and cinemas won't go as quickly as they come. Similarly, I come back and keep looking into myself, and it's always steel, concrete, fan magazines, machinery, bubble gum; nothing as sweet as the original marsh."
Five books you'll never part with:
Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard is one of the most beautiful and important books I've ever read. Simard is a phenomenal storyteller as well as scientist. I wish it were mandatory reading for everyone.
Everything Under by Daisy Johnson is an example of her incredible mind at its best. That book blows me away with how well she modernizes a classic myth.
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is so beautifully written that I hugged it when I finished. She is a stunning writer, and I wish she had more recognition in the United States.
Please Don't Come Back from the Moon by Dean Bakopoulos perfectly describes what it felt like to be fatherless in the Detroit suburbs in the '80s and really hit home for me. That book will forever have a soft spot in my heart.
And The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, which needs no explanation. The fact that she wrote it at age 23 is mind-blowing.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi is an incredibly poetic and creative book. It forces you to read slowly and deliberately, because each sentence is like a tiny gift. Her work is literary fiction at its finest.
Book you wish you had written:
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, because I've been trying to write literary fiction with an unusual, non-human character (mine will remain nameless in case I eventually pull it off) and it's SO HARD TO DO and she did it so damn well with that octopus. That novel is just plain delightful to read. I'm excited to see what she does next.