Earlier this year, Kerry Donoghue‘s debut short story collection Mouth was published by Unsolicited Press. Prior to publishing this collection, her poetry and stories have appeared in Ninth Letter, Painted Bride Quarterly, Permafrost, The Louisville Review, and The South Carolina Review.
She is also part of the Poets & Writers Get the Word Out publicity incubator, which Debutiful announced last December.
We asked her to answer our recurring My Reading Life questionnaire so readers could get to know her and the books that shaped her life.
What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?
The Choose Your Own Adventure series knocked me out of my Keds. I grew up as the only daughter in an Irish-Catholic household of brothers, so my childhood was full of rules and shoulds and shame. But those books, which I’d snatch up by the stackful at the library, empowered me for the first time in my life. I got to explore the globe and drive my own destiny in ways that I couldn’t as a kid. I’d be in my bedroom, pissed at my parents or hiding from my brothers, flipping ahead to page 36 to see if I’d played the right hand in the story. Did I die in an avalanche? Three times. Was the tiger with the blue eyes chasing me? I DO WHAT I WANT. It was also the first time I realized how life could be so different for men, something that shocked me when I made choices as a male narrator. That clear imbalance shifted something in me as a girl.
Side note: was anyone else obsessed with the artwork in those books? It left a mark on me. My childhood assumptions about becoming an adult inevitably starred a pointy-chinned man in a slim turtleneck and shifty eyes.
What book helped you through puberty?
Puberty, for me, was a full tank of anger. I had thick bifocals I couldn’t get used to, several unexpected deaths in the family, a lot of big emotions I didn’t know how to deal with. I just wanted freedom. A place for my hormonal rage. And maybe also details about the plague? I was drawn to lurid histories and peculiar human body stuff. So naturally I couldn’t get enough of the Eyewitness Books because I could gawk at the Tower of London and embalmed mummies and those scary gladiators with the nets. The way Eyewitness Books married quiet rebellion and morbid curiosity hit home for me. There was something comforting about studying the horrors of history at a time when I was struggling with the horrors of my own adolescence. Maybe the books created a sense of honesty that I was desperate for in my own young life. They felt like a cool cousin explaining life to me, instead of a confusing god in a book I wasn’t supposed to question every Sunday.
What book do you think all teenagers should be assigned in school?
Books are a lighthouse, especially for kids, so it’s terrifying to see an influx of book bans threatening to dim their future. These are the books I’d want my own kids to read: Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston, to help them connect how the atrocities of our American history still snake through us today and to root themselves in compassion. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, as a guide through the wide breadth of love and poetry and heartache and hope. And Know My Name by Chanel Miller, to respect the power of no.
If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the Syllabus?
Ooooh, these books destroyed me as a reader and a writer:
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
- There, There by Tommy Orange
- Tinkers by Paul Harding
- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
- No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
What books helped guide you while writing your book?
When I’m writing, I reach for nonfiction because it helps me protect my creative space. I don’t want the accidental influence of another fiction writer’s voice in my head—for comparison’s sake or inspiration or taunting. I have enough problems in there.
The first book is Call of the Mall by Paco Underhill. My story collection, Mouth, is themed around consumption, primarily because I spent so much time in SoCal malls (it was the 80s and 90s, the Night Stalker had killed someone nearby, we couldn’t play outside because of all the smog alerts—malls seemed like a safe space). Call of the Mall was one of those accidental finds fueled by library luck, bringing me a book I didn’t know I needed to read. It digs into the psychology of mall layouts, the anesthetizing effect of wandering around in circles, how the grouping of food courts and the placement of sales tables influence our primal instincts. And it showed me how to tie consumption and psychology together, which is a driving force in all the stories of Mouth.
I’d also be a real jerk not to shout out Matt Bell’s BANGER of a revision guide, Refuse to Be Done. A good friend sent it to me right before I got serious about the final revisions of Mouth and the timing couldn’t have been more helpful. It’s a simple, no-holds-barred approach to finalizing your manuscript. Like, done done. Which, if you’re also a control freak writer who won’t (can’t?) stop tweaking sentences and word choices until your manuscript is bound and at the printer (and maybe even then), you might find Bell’s book to be a dream in learning how to trust your gut and put the pen down. It’s part gameplan, part pep talk, all life raft.
What books are on your nightstand now?
Oh god, my nightstand is about to buckle with all I have stacked on it. I haven’t been able to help myself lately. Or catch up.
Right now, I’ve got:
- Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda
- The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr
- The Gloomy Girl Variety Show by Freda Epum
- Ten Times Calmer: Beat Anxiety and Change Your Life by Dr. Kirren Schnack
- Sky Daddy by Kate Folk
That’s in addition to 19 issues of the New Yorker from 2024 (oh NO, I also found 7 from 2023) that I’ve been promising myself I’ll read “soon.”
Help.