Katherine Heiny has traveled one of the more interesting roads into publishing we’ve heard in a while. She was published by The New Yorker at the incredible age of 25. Praised as a prodigy, her work appeared in an anthology alongside Alice Munro, Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie. And then she disappeared.

She popped back up two decades later when she published her first story collection, Single, Carefree, Mellow – followed by two novels, Early Morning Riser and Standard Deviation, and now she’s back with another story collection. In those intervening years, she married a former spy, wrote 25 young adult books under a pen name, and emerged the hilarious and gut-punching writer she is today.

Games & Rituals came out last year. Katherine joins Marrie Stone to talk about the collection, what writing YA brought to her fiction, the situation versus the story and finding the aboutness of your story, what the short story form allows her to do that the novel does not, how to weave backstory into your short stories, fictionalizing real life events, Katherine’s thoughts about publishing and so much more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on March 20, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)