Kate Brandes

Kate Brandes lives in the small river town of Riegelsville, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two sons. She writes about and paints rural places and small-town dynamics with underlying environmental themes. Kate has worked as a geologist and environmental scientist for more than twenty years. She currently teaches geology, creative writing and a course on Landscape, Culture and Story of Place at Moravian University, where she also co-directs the Moravian Writers’ Conference. Kate’s first novel, The Promise of Pierson Orchard, was published in 2017. Her second novel, Stone Creek, comes out in August 2024.

Facebook: @kate.a.brandes

Instagram: @kate_brandes

Is your go to comfort food sweet or savory? Is it something you make yourself? Does food inspire your writing?

I really like bread, especially warm bread with butter. I’ve been trying to make my own sourdough for the last six months or so. It’s a process that’s kind of like writing in that it’s harder than it looks and takes some experience.

Vacation druthers… City or Rural destination? Why?

The best vacation I’ve taken in a long while was to the English countryside with my family last summer. We rented a little cottage in a tiny village. And it was lovely to be able to walk through the fields to find a nearby pub. It was idyllic and so relaxing. I like cities, too, but a rural destination feels more like vacation.

What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?

Both have their highs and lows. Being a writer is wonderful because, as long as you’re not writing on a deadline, you can occupy a kind of dreamy creative state where anything is possible. I guess on the negative side of being a writer is all the rejection that’s usually inherent in trying to get your work out there. The best part of being an author is talking about your writing with readers. It’s so fun to hear people’s own interpretation of the story. The most challenging thing about being an author is probably that it requires a very outward facing marketing stance that’s so different from the dreamy writer world. That can take some getting used to.

I don’t shift gears between the two very well. But I try to be a writer in the morning when I have the best creative potential and an author later in the day when I have the most energy.

Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing?

I like to paint. Like my writing, my visual art is rooted in a landscape’s influence on person and community. Most recently I’ve worked on hand drawn maps using digital tools, as well as watercolor and ink paintings of landscapes, both real and imagined, largely drawn from my experience with and affinity for living in rural places.

What piece of clothing tells the most interesting story about your life?

It’s not a piece of clothing, but a piece of jewelry I bought for around $100 in New York City when I was 18. This was back in 1989 when I was working as a waitress and $100 was 1) almost all my money at the time and 2) about 10 times what I or anyone else I knew had ever spent on jewelry. It was a necklace that I still wear and is totally me 34 years later: a loose silver chain with a series of semi-precious gemstone and fossil pendants. I think it’s cool that my 18-year-old-self bought my 52-year-old-self her favorite thing to wear.