Kathryn Scanlan is an American writer. She has published two novels and a collection of short stories. Her fiction often reworks non-fictional source material, including interviews and found texts. She has won the Gordon Burn Prize and the Windham-Campbell Prize.

Scanlan was born in Iowa in 1980.^[1] She grew up in rural eastern Iowa.^[2][3] Her mother's family were farmers, her father's family racehorse trainers.^[4]

Scanlan studied literature and art at the University of Iowa^[2] then did an MFA in writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.^[1][3]

She lives in Los Angeles.^[1][4]

Scanlan's first published short story was "Line", which appeared in NOON Annual in 2009.^[5][6] NOON founder and editor Diane Williams became a mentor for Scanlan^[2][3] and NOON published more of Scanlan's fiction throughout the 2010s,^[7][8] including excerpts from the material that would later became her first book, Aug 9 – Fog.^[9][6] Scanlan's story "The Old Mill" was published in The Iowa Review^[10] and won the 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Prize.^[1][11] Other stories appeared in Tin House, from which she received a scholarship to attend the 2013 Tin House Summer Workshop,^[12] Fence,^[13] and American Short Fiction.^[14]

Scanlan published her first full-length work, Aug 9 – Fog, in 2019. The book is based on a diary that Scanlan found at an estate auction.^[15][16] The diary belonged to an elderly Iowan woman, and covers the years 1968 to 1972.^[17][18] Scanlan selected fragments from the 400 pages of the diary and rearranged them to form a narrative arc, ordered in five seasonal sections.^[3][15] In an essay published in The Paris Review in 2019, Scanlan described how she later tracked down the diarist on Find A Grave and found out that she had died at the age of 95, four years after the diary ends.^[18][16]

Scanlan's collection of short stories, The Dominant Animal, was published in 2020. Containing 40 very short stories, it focuses on the relationship between humans and the natural world, especially animals.^[19][20][4] The collection continues Scanlan's mixing of genres, with some stories reworked from found texts and conversations, including an old book about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and a conversation with a bus driver.^[3]

Scanlan's second novel, Kick the Latch, was published in 2022. It is based on interviews Scanlan conducted with Iowa-born horse trainer Sonia, a family friend.^[4][3] These were carried out in person and then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, over the phone.^[3] The interview material is extensively reworked to form a linear narrative of the trainer's life, from birth to retirement, rendered in short chapters arranged in numbered sections.^[21][17][22]

In March 2024, Kick the Latch won the Gordon Burn Prize.^[23][24]

In April 2024, Scanlan was awarded the $175,000 Windham-Campbell Prize.^[1][20][25]

Scanlan has also published art criticism and essays in Artforum^[26][27] and Another Gaze.^[28][29]

• 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Arts and Letters Award: Literature^[1][30]
• 2024 Gordon Burn Prize^[23][24]
• 2024 Windham-Campbell Prize^[1][20]

• Aug 9 – Fog, MCD/FSG, 2019. ISBN 978-0374106874
• The Dominant Animal, MCD x FSG Originals, 2020. ISBN 978-0374538293
• Kick the Latch, New Directions, 2022. ISBN 978-0811232005

• Kathryn Scanlan official website