#17: An Interview with Kerry Donoghue
"When the urge to create something is more powerful than the pull to share it, it’s worth doing."
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Today's interview is with writer Kerry Donoghue, whose debut collection of short stories, MOUTH, explores the hungers that plague us. Her work has been published in Ninth Letter, The Louisville Review and The South Carolina Review, among others. A graduate of the University of San Francisco's MFA in Writing program, she is also the author of The Loudest Voice of All, a children's book dedicated to educating young girls about their voting rights.
Kerry recently became a member of the Poets & Writers 2025 Get the Word Out Fiction Cohort, a publicity incubator that helps nine early career fiction writers learn the ins and outs of book promotion with a seasoned publicist.
Suburban mall culture defined Kerry’s formative years in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s. These commercial spaces—where she speed-walked with her grandmother, worked retail and navigated adolescence — ignited her fascination with consumer behaviour, which led to the writing of MOUTH.
I adore the premise of Kerry’s riveting debut, MOUTH. From a rodeo clown to a pearl diver and aspiring mermaid, each character grapples with their innermost hungers and desires. MOUTH explores how our appetites shape us — and what happens when those needs are not met.
Follow Kerry’s journey on Instagram and Tiktok.
Who are you and how do you express your creativity or describe your art?
Words have always felt like the truest way for me to express myself.
I was a pretty shy kid in a very Catholic family, growing up around alcoholism—a trifecta that left me feeling constricted and muted. Writing became a lifeline to myself. I started with a diary, but I was so panicked that my brothers would break the lock on it that I wrote in a fragmented, coded style, which I now see was my first stab at poetry.
And since this was also the suburbs of Los Angeles during the ‘80s and ‘90s, against the backdrop of earthquakes and smog alerts and the Night Stalker, malls became a trusted meeting place. I didn’t realize how much of my life was spent there until I moved away and finished writing MOUTH, trying to distill the themes.
Fiction is amazing like that, unveiling what your obsessions are in ways you didn’t expect.
Or at least set out to show. But each story kept revealing the same themes, through what my characters were eating, drinking, wearing, who they were kissing. And I think that traces back to growing up in malls, witnessing the intense suburban consumption of SoCal.
Malls were a kind of refuge for me, and a school. They were sometimes places of aspiration, sometimes anesthesia. But ultimately they’re where I learned how to observe. And what better place to do that than an enclosed area where everyone is secretly addressing their desperation in interesting ways?
So writing is how I explore these secret hungers. Or maybe process my life. MOUTH, my debut short story collection, is now out, with ten stories themed around this need to fill our American emptiness.
What keeps you coming back to creative work? Why is it worth doing?
I think I’m fueled by the power of secrets, the tension between what’s said and unsaid, because I’m curious about how we each handle that quiet underlying hum inside us, our core doubts and fears and hopes. How do we ever truly connect with each other? Can we ever really know someone? We have to put those feelings somewhere.
How are other people doing it? Writing helps me pry away from myself and forge the search into something that hopefully resonates outside my brain.
When the urge to create something is more powerful than the pull to share it, it’s worth doing. From my experience, the truest work is rooted in intensely personal moments, not fame or cash or popularity. I need to be happy with what I’ve written before it goes anywhere else. It’s worth doing when it sets my soul right.
MOUTH is my first book and it took me 16 years, from start to publish. As the years wore on and the rejections heaped, it became a real battle to believe in myself. I got stuck at the crossroads between giving it up and giving it one more go. I’m so grateful I chose the latter.
I set the manuscript aside for a year to work on other things, and then gave it another read-through during the COVID lockdown. Reading it still gave me the tingle, so I knew it was worth revising. Now the book finally feels right to me. And that made it worth doing. So yes, stubbornness is also a good motivator.
What legacy do you hope to leave with your art?
I hope my writing makes people feel less alone. I’ve always found refuge in books, community in stories, and if I can write something that resonates for someone, maybe pulls them through a tough moment or makes them feel seen, then my art did its job.
In a world where words do so much harm, I hope mine do a little good.
What are your biggest challenges when it comes to maintaining a steady creative practice, and how have you overcome them?
I work full-time as a corporate copywriter and have two young kiddos, so I’m in a season of life where I have to steal my creative time. And that can get tricky because I’m constantly multitasking—cooking dinner while I’m thinking of how I could improve a scene, helping my kids with their homework while taking story notes so I don’t forget my ever-interrupted thoughts. I struggle to stay present.
Motherhood is already a constant push-and-pull of guilt that leaves me feeling like I’m forever disappointing someone, so adding the pressure of a creative practice onto that can feel overwhelming.
The counterbalance is that I’ve always been very disciplined when it comes to my writing.
I earned my MFA from the University of San Francisco when I was 29, in a program that met at night, so I got used to earmarking my evenings for writing time. Then, when I got pregnant at 35, I was terrified that becoming a mom would make it impossible for me to ever have writing time again. So I made a point to put the late nights to good use, knocking out edits while breastfeeding or revising paragraphs when my kids were sick and could only sleep on me. And that flexibility has served my writing practice well because I’m not precious about when I write. I’m so desperate to have a full hour to myself (dreams!) that I’ve trained my brain not to waste time.
Anyway, this is a long-winded way to say that I fight very hard for my creative practice. I stay up too late and compartmentalize my days and I keep obsessing over drafts because it’s vital to me that I don’t lose that part of my identity. And in the end, fighting for my writing makes me happier.
There are trade-offs for sure (I show up after the start time for just about everything and my desk chair is also my closet), but I’m grateful I haven’t lost myself. I’m still out here, maybe (probably) in a toothpaste-stained sweatshirt, churning out the words. lol
What advice do you have for someone who wants to start or maintain their creative practice in a new way?
Keep yourself grounded. When you’re writing out of the love for it, the need to do it, you’ll find the time.
One way to start: be realistic about what you can currently manage. With young kids, I can never write at the same time or place. And I don’t necessarily write every day; some days the words are hot trash, some days are booked up with playdates. What works for me lately is approaching every day with the intention of working on some aspect of my writing, whether that’s spending two hours to submit a poem or twenty minutes spent sorting my submission emails into the appropriate writing folders. And that way, it takes the pressure off, which makes me more likely to stick to it. When I feel like I’m constantly working on it in some capacity, I’m less anxious. And then if I skip a day, it’s okay. I’ll get back on it tomorrow.
What grounds me is putting my headphones on and walking along the coast every morning before work so I can quiet my ever-racing brain and figure out what one thing I want to focus on that day. And then I’m ready to build it into my day, wherever it best fits.
It’s so easy to get distracted by what other writers are celebrating on Instagram or all the open tabs on your computer. But if you can stay centered, quiet all that extra noise, and make it manageable, you’ll get the writing done. However you choose yourself is the way to go. Slow and steady.
Why does mentorship/community support matter?
This is something I’ve battled for a long time as a writer. Maybe because writing is such a solitary act–I’m constantly lost in my head creating imaginary worlds, tensions, conflicts. And the end result is something I only share when it’s ready. It’s always felt very isolating.
But the further I get into my writing journey, the more I realize that being a writer is actually a communal experience. There are writing groups helping revise it, publishers choosing it, editors perfecting it, other writers blurbing it, and of course readers connecting with it. The writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
And becoming comfortable with that idea of community—or being seen— has been one of the most challenging parts of publishing my first book for me. I have to let go of what I’ve written once it’s out in the world, and to do so, I have to let part of myself go too.
I couldn’t do that without the kindness or encouragement from people who care about me.
Do you have a mentor? If no, are there other support structures or community that have helped you?
I don’t have a mentor, but I do have a writing group that I live and die for. Hannah Fairbanks, Pete Sheehy, and I have had the privilege of working together for over eighteen years. They’ve read SO MANY drafts. Given me endless pep talks. Sent me congratulatory donuts. They’re my first and last eyes on just about everything I write and I wouldn’t be here without them.
In terms of other support structures that have helped me, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but working corporate writing jobs has actually been a huge boon for my writing. Hear me out! For one thing, marketing copy demands brevity and an instant hook, which has helped me sharpen my own writing. There’s also the practice of having to present my work, sitting through people critiquing it in front of me, often when they’re not writers themselves. It’s a lesson in humility, but also patience. So much patience.
How did you find your mentor (or support structure / community) and how has your mentor (or support structure / community) impacted you?
Getting into an MFA program was instrumental in me becoming a writer. Having that structure and the luxury of immersion gave me the validation I needed to give writing a real shot. It’s funny, I applied to the program thinking I was a poet, took a course on becoming a teacher. By the end of the program, I didn’t want to do either and had completed a collection of short stories. I wouldn’t have had the confidence or the skills to do that without the program.
I’m also grateful that I found the right program for me. The class sizes were small, which was so helpful in bonding with my cohorts as well as getting access to my professors. That was key for me; I felt like I could flounder, could ask the embarrassing questions. It’s also where I learned that writing means community. It’s somehow been seventeen years since I graduated (!!) and I still hang out with people from the program. What’s better than swooning over words with other writers?
Who is your dream mentor, living or dead, and why?
George Saunders. Not only is he a wildly talented writer, but I love how he approaches teaching with humility and generosity. He’s not gatekeeping—he’s always turning around to hold the door open for other writers. His emails and Substack posts (Story Club is a delight!) are filled with a kind guidance and engaging conversation that I admire and hope to emulate.
(Interview answers received via email January 10, 2025.)
Thank you, Cara! You are so generous.