Kat Tang is a former lawyer turned fiction writer with an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Electric Literature, The Margins, Pigeon Pages, Driftwood Press, among others. She spends most of her time thinking about writing and sometimes she even writes. Her debut novel, FIVE-STAR STRANGER, is out with Scribner (imprint of Simon & Schuster) and has been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition and People Magazine, received starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist, been selected as a Belletrist Book Club pick, an Oprah’s Book Club Must Read, and an Indie Next pick among others. She is hard at work on a second novel. @tangkat
Can you describe how growing up in Japan influenced your imagination? I was born in Hangzhou, China, moved to Sendai, Japan when I was young, and then settled (though I use the word settled lightly because we moved 3 more times) in the Bay Area. The constant moving meant that I had to learn how to navigate different cultures and languages from a young age. Maybe this is why I've never really been interested in taking part in the predominant culture because to me it has always shifted. I'm fascinated by subcultures: I was a breakdancer in college, I became a Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master a few years ago, and I love watching RuPaul's Drag Race now. I'm sure this all influences my writing in ways I've not yet uncovered.
As a young reader, what books were you drawn to and how did it shape your love of language? As a child, I loved stories about exploration and far-away places. My friends and I would play Magic Tree House where we'd pretend to be whisked off to feudal Japan and ancient Egypt. I also loved stories about transformation, inhabiting other bodies/lives, like Animorphs.
How do you organize your time when you're immersed in writing? I heard somewhere that you should do the most difficult task of your day first thing in the morning and for me that means going straight to writing. My routine is to wake up, get dressed (well, let's be honest here, semi-dressed), and start writing. Usually, I'm revising a page or two of what I've already written to warm up the engine, and then moving forward in the narrative. I like to complete a full draft of a manuscript before getting feedback from friends and then slashing away at a full rewrite.
Tell us about the creative process behind Five-Star Stranger. For my debut novel, Five-Star Stranger, most of it was written during the pandemic, and so my creative process was to write until cabin fever forced me to climb out of my bedroom window, up the fire escape, and onto the roof just to stare off into the distance. Since the concept of renting people on an app was made up, I didn't have much research to do except conceptualize the "what if"s of situations in my mind.
Do you keep a journal or notebook? If so, what’s in it? I keep a hand written personal diary as well as an "observations" note on my phone for phrases that people say in conversation or situations I witness as I go about my day out in NYC.
How do you research and what role does research play in your writing? For my next project, which I keep telling people is historical fiction because it takes place in 2011, I've had to do a lot more research. Because the story is set in Japan during the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami this has meant reading books on the topic, watching video footage of the tsunami, and looking at photographs of the aftermath. It is heavy, heavy stuff. I am also referencing my own journal entries from when I volunteered there in the aftermath of the disaster. It is a fine balance between bringing the story to life through vivid and realistic details and burdening the reader with too much researched information.
Which writer, living or dead, would you most like to have dinner with? Edward St. Aubyn
Do you draw inspiration from music, art, or other disciplines? I'm a dabbler in many art forms: dance, painting, ceramics, gastronomy, comics, etc. I draw inspiration from all of them in my writing: the pacing of a dance show as pacing of a scene, the layering of paint in general shapes before working in finer details as a way of allowing my manuscript to be messy before it becomes refined, etc.
AI and technology is changing the ways we write and receive stories. What are your reflections on AI, technology and the future of storytelling? And why is it important that humans remain at the center of the creative process? AI can only use what we feed it to regurgitate an amalgam of tired tropes. I asked it once to write a story about breakdancers at Harvard in the New Yorker style and it gave me a white-savior story (which was amusingly bad). As individuals, we can use our own experiences and questions and mistakes to fuel the creative process whereas AI does not live a life that can resonate with others on the page. I hope we don't enter a future of storytelling where the center is hollow.
Tell us about some books you've recently enjoyed and your favorite books and writers of all time. This is always a tough question because there are so many fantastic writers and my favorites change with my mood. Recently I've enjoyed Katie Kitamura's A Separation and Adrian Tomine's Killing and Dying. Some all time favorite books: People of Paper (Salvador Plascencia), The Patrick Melrose novels (Edward St. Aubyn), A Personal Matter (Kenzaburo Oe), and Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Kaveh Akbar)
How do you personally connect to arts and culture, and what significance does the creative process hold for you? The humanities are how we hold a mirror up to ourselves and examine the best and worst that we have to offer. How we sort through all that to create the art worth sharing is fascinating.
