Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Katherine Center" in English language version.
In graduate school at UH, minimalists like Raymond Carver and Amy Hempel were big influences on Center's style. But she gravitated toward David Sedaris-like subject matter — funny, off-the-wall stuff. "I really love writers who can make you laugh," she says. She has a two-book deal from Ballantine and is putting the finishing touches on her second novel, about a woman with three young sons who decides she needs to reconnect with aspects of her pre-mom identity. It's due next summer.
The theme I seem to come back to is how we pick ourselves back up after life has knocked us down. And it's because I'm not really good at that. It's very easy for me to be like, 'Well, it's hopeless' and throw myself on the floor. So I am fascinated by how other people do it.
Katherine Center graduated from Vassar College, where she won the Vassar College Fiction Prize, and received an MA in fiction from the University of Houston. She served as fiction co-editor for the literary magazine Gulf Coast, and her graduate thesis, Peepshow, a collection of stories, was a finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. A former freelancer and teacher, she lives in Houston with her husband and two young children.
