Member Spotlight: Kate Walter

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Writing was my salvation during the pandemic. It helped me get through the loneliness of the lockdown as a single person living alone in Manhattan. It resulted in my new memoir in essays: Behind the Mask: Living Alone in the Epicenter. My book also contains 12 writing prompts that readers can use as tool to process and heal from their pandemic experiences.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Just sit down and get some words on the page.

What is your favorite time to write? Early in the morning right after I get up. I have coffee, then I meditate and then I write.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Just get words on the page. Revise later. Always get feedback from trusted people and rewrite and rewrite some more.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I’m excited that a book can be produced quickly. I started this book in March 2020 by publishing essays. When it hit me I was writing a pandemic memoir, I pitched my small press publisher in December 2020 and we set a deadline of June 2021 and edited over the summer. My book comes out this month November 2021.

Kate Walter’s Behind the Mask: Living Alone in the Epicenter is out now with Heliotrope Books.