Reading with... Kimi Cunningham Grant

photo: Holt Grant

Kimi Cunningham Grant is the author of the novels These Silent Woods and Fallen Mountains, as well as a memoir, Silver Like Dust. She is a two-time winner of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Prize in Poetry and a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship in creative nonfiction. Her new book, The Nature of Disappearing (Minotaur Books, June 18, 2024), is a captivating novel of suspense that explores what it takes to start over--and the cost of letting the past pull you back in. Grant lives with her family in Pennsylvania.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Fishing guide Emlyn must team up with the man who ruined her life and head deep into the Idaho wilderness when the friend who introduced them goes missing.

On your nightstand now:

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. I lucked out and snagged this off a special shelf at the library, even though I was number 40 in line with my hold! Within a few paragraphs I was hooked. Lawhon wonderfully captures 18th-century life, and with skill and beauty, she builds one mystery after another in her small New England community.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. I recently re-read it with my kids, and wow, I was still blown away by Babbitt's beautiful coming-of-age tale. It's so lyrical and so ambitious in the themes it explores. I loved it when I was 11, and I loved it as an adult!

Your top authors:

Oh, boy--this is tough. I'll narrow it down to favorite contemporaries: Anthony Doerr, Amy Jo Burns, Leif Enger, Barbara Kingsolver, Marilynne Robinson, Hannah Tinti.

Book you've faked reading:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (in 12th grade! But then I did actually read it as a senior in college, for a post-colonial literature class. I learned a lot, reading it within the context of that course).

Book you're an evangelist for:

I also absolutely love Hannah Tinti's The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley. A few years ago, when my agent felt These Silent Woods was ready to submit to editors, we knew we needed to come up with a list of comparable titles for the pitch, so I reached out to all my reader friends and asked for any father-daughter books they could think of. A friend suggested Tinti's book, so I read it. I fell head over heels for it. This novel is an absolute masterpiece in literary suspense, with scenes that range from heart-pounding to heart-shattering. I later taught this book in a fiction writing class because it's just so brilliant--I felt every reader in the class could gain something from it.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Idaho by Emily Ruskovich. Okay, not so much for the cover, but for the title! Central Idaho is one of my favorite places, and my new novel takes place there, so last winter I finally picked this up. It blew me away. As a fiction writer, I always love a good story. But I also absolutely need the writing to be lyrical and evocative if I'm going to finish a book. (I realize that sounds snooty, but it's really just a thing for me!) Idaho hit all the marks.

Book you hid from your parents:

Forever... by Judy Blume. My friend read it and loaned it to me. (We all had that friend, right?! The one whose parents didn't have rules about what they read, watched, or did.) My mom rarely picked up my books, but for some reason, she found this one and read it. She had a few questions for me, obviously. (Picture my teenage self blushing.)

Book that changed your life:

The Bible

Favorite line from a book:

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" --from Mary Oliver's poem "The Summer Day," first published in House of Light

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Oh, such a great question! I'm gonna go with Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. It's got multiple storylines, all of which I loved, but I remember reading it, and thinking to myself, "In less capable hands, I would doubt whether these storylines could come together in a meaningful way... but it's Anthony Doerr, so I have no doubt he's gonna pull it off." And boy oh boy, he did. I absolutely loved this book. (Maybe even more than All the Light We Cannot See, which I also adored!)

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