Meet Kate Maruyama | writer, teacher, editor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kate Maruyama and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kate, what inspires you?
I’m deeply inspired by hanging out with, listening to, and reading the writers around me. There’s this phenomenal Venn Diagram of communities of writers in Los Angeles that spans genres and generations. From my early writer friends, to my grad school lit friends, to my activist poet friends, to my horror writer friends, to my own students as young writers coming up in this vibrant city, I feel very lucky in all the local writing I get to read.

I’ve always written, badly for years, but not writing feels like not eating or not breathing to me. It’s just something I do. I’m lucky enough to be in a place where things are happening because of it.

My students are my greatest inspiration these days. I read their journals, fiction, and non-fiction and laugh out loud sometimes or wow at their original and fresh writing. I tell them they have so much to pull from, and that this city is so unique for its general daily kindnesses, its cultural mixing, its varying neighborhoods, and its noncompetitive, mellow, supportive artistic communities. Outsiders will tell young writers that they need to move to New York to become writers and I’m so thrilled to introduce them to the rich literary world around them, right where they grew up. I tell them they’re the custodians of this city’s stories and they need to continue on the path Los Angeles writers before them have laid. It’s up to them to tell their stories in their voices and to capture life here. Because right now, it feels like the city of Los Angeles is represented by a small group of transplants in the film industry who paint a picture of swimming pools and plastic surgery set against a monochromatic landscape, when that’s not the city most folks who live here know. Small local presses like Tia Chucha, Writ Large Press, Kaya Press, and groups like Women Who Submit are making sure local voices are supported and getting published. And, lucky for readers everywhere, some of my students are already getting published!

Please tell us more about your work. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
Well, I kept writing! I wrote screenplays for a while, but didn’t get much traction there, which may have been a little bit due to the fact that it was the 90s and I was female. I got frustrated and wrote a novel, which didn’t get anywhere but got me into grad school at Antioch University Los Angeles. I’ve always wanted to teach, so grad school gave me double whammy of being schooled in fiction, and getting the MFA necessary to teach college. I teach at Antioch and Cal State LA and I’ve had a long running private novel workshop thanks to Writing Workshops LA, which was a beautiful space run by Edan Lepucki and Chris Daley. Antioch also provided whole ton of marvelous friends and colleagues, some of whom, like the brilliant thinkers Seth Fischer and Xochitl Julisa Bermejo have already been featured in this column.

I tend to write what’s in front of me, or what is calling to me. In writing my first published novel, Harrowgate which deals with love and loss and ghosts, I found not only a lot of readers, but met a phenomenal crew of horror writers! More brilliant colleagues and friends. I kept writing on questions of love and my next novel on that topic Alterations, set in LA in the 1930s-40s comes out from Running Wild Press next year. I took all my frustrations and thoughts on broken systems from working in the film industry (I worked in development for ten years there, as well as trying to be a writer) and wove them into a tale of Hollywood, greed, narcissism, demons, corrupt systems, and betrayals. The result of that, my second horror novel, The Collective comes out from Writ Large Press in serial form this April and as a solid book later this year.

It should be noted that none of this was immediate. I wrote Alterations in 2013, and The Collective in 2016, I’m just in a very lucky place where the time is right for these two books. I only ever write what’s consuming me at the time. Now it’s a collection of stories set in a slightly magical Los Angeles in my attempt to capture the palimpsest of neighborhoods and erasure the city is built on. I’m also very, very slowly working on a new novel that examines lifelong friendship…but with horror, because that’s the way it’s coming out. I know full well these may not see the light of day for another decade, but again, writing, breathing.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I go into conniptions when a friend only has a short time in which to see LA because it won’t be enough time to really show them. I usually start with a walking tour of downtown, starting in Chinatown to grab some dumplings at Long’s Family Bakery on Spring Street, strolling through Olvera Street where we’ll stop for horchata or jamaica. Then it’s on down Spring or Main. I used to stop in City Hall because LA historian Mike Sonksen taught me that you could go in on weekdays and take the elevator to the top to see views of the city. Most of my reference points for DTLA are from Mike’s walking tours of downtown. City Hall used to be the tallest building in Los Angeles. But access has been closed since the pandemic, so we’ll keep walking along to third and Broadway to pop into the Bradbury Building if allowed I always take visitors to see the memorial to Biddy Mason behind that building. She was one of the biggest influences on the creation of the City of Los Angeles we know. If you haven’t heard of her, look up her story, it’ll blow your mind.

Then onto Spring and Sixth street where we stop into The Last Bookstore to see phenomenal Book Labyrinth by artist David Lovejoy. We’ll wind up at Grand Central Market for lunch. I always stop at Roast to Go which is one of the few original restaurants in there that remains. I’d take another entire morning and lunch for Little Tokyo, where I’d take them to the Japanese American National Museum, a tour of First Street for history (thanks to traci akemi kato-kiriyama for that education,) and stopping at Fugetsudo for mochi. We’d eat lunch at T.O.T. on second or, if they’ve got the scratch, Izakaya Gazen for the most Japan-tasting Japanese food I’ve had outside that country. I do a walking tour of Hollywood for those into that history. I lived in that neighborhood for seven years, and I’m a nerd about early film history, so it’s personal.

And we haven’t even started on the nature! There’s a nice three mile hike up to the top of Griffith for the view that out of towners love because it won’t kill you, but I’d be tempted to take them up into Brand Park where the winding path makes you forget you’re in the city at all or Eaton Canyon for waterfalls and springs. After a hike lunch at any one of a dozen family owned mini-mall restaurants that are affordable and delicious. Sushi Rex is a small family-owned place up in La Crescenta with phenomenal sushi burritos. I’d love to wind up somewhere for outdoor music, the LACMA, the Autry, wherever it pops up. Zuma beach is also a favorite for watching dolphins or walking to the tide pools to the north of the beach. But that’s its own day. Phew, even writing all that I’m worn out!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Goodness. So many. First off there is not a draft of any book I write that doesn’t pass through the hands of dearest friend and brilliant writer Toni Ann Johnson. I teach stories from her collection Light Skin Gone To Waste for a master class in scene and dialogue. After that I’ll have to stay in one circle of the Venn Diagram so as not to worry I’m forgetting anyone because there are so many marvelous writers and friends and community leaders in Los Angeles. For this time I’m asked the question, we’ll stay in the Writ Large crowd whom I really got to know during their 90x90LA events. The aforementioned educator and LA historian Mike Sonksen, whose book Letters to My City is a must read for any Los Angeles writer. Poet, playwright, activist and all around amazing human traci akemi kato-kiryama, whose Navigating without Instruments is such a layered everything about activism, identity, and the city both historical and present, and Chiwan Choi, Judeth Oden Choi, and Peter Woods from Writ Large, who published both of those books. There’s a beautiful collection of poetry coming out from Tanzila Ahmed from them titled Grasping at This Planet Just to Believe: Poetry over a Decade of Ramadans.

I’d like also shout out Women Who Submit, an organization (I serve on their board) that seeks to empower women and nonbinary writers by creating physical and virtual spaces for sharing information, supporting and encouraging submissions to literary journals, and clarifying the submission and publication process.

Website: katemaruyama.com

Instagram: @katemaruyama

Twitter: @katemaruyama

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kate.maruyama/

Other: Threads @katemaruyama