Kathryn Scanlan

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.

Life and education Scanlan was born in Iowa in 1980. She grew up in rural eastern Iowa. Her mother's family were farmers, her father's family racehorse trainers.

Scanlan studied literature and art at the University of Iowa NOON founder and editor Diane Williams became a mentor for Scanlan including excerpts from the material that would later became her first book, Aug 9 – Fog. and won the 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Prize. Other stories appeared in Tin House, from which she received a scholarship to attend the 2013 Tin House Summer Workshop, Fence, and American Short Fiction.

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. The diary belonged to an elderly Iowan woman, and covers the years 1968 to 1972. Scanlan selected fragments from the 400 pages of the diary and rearranged them to form a narrative arc, ordered in five seasonal sections.

In March 2024, Kick the Latch won the Gordon Burn Prize.

In April 2024, Scanlan was awarded the $175,000 Windham-Campbell Prize.

Other work Scanlan has also published art criticism and essays in Artforum and Another Gaze.

Awards 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Arts and Letters Award: Literature 2024 Gordon Burn Prize 2024 Windham-Campbell Prize