Katie Munnik

Katie Munnik is a poet and novelist living in Wales. Her poems have been featured by Poetry Wales, the Cardiff Review and Bywords and longlisted for Nine Arches Primer and the CBC Poetry Prize. Her debut novel The Heart Beats in Secret was a USA Today Bestseller, and her most-recent novel, The Aerialists was Waterstones Welsh Book of the Month. Katie is represented by Evan Brown at Transatlantic Agency.

Katie can be found at:
Website: www.katiemunnik.com
Instagram: @KatieMunnik
Twitter: @messy_table
Facebook: facebook.com/katie.munnik/

What kind of reactions have you had to your book?

The Heart Beats in Secret

My readers tell me they enjoy how I describe place, and I’m thrilled about that as landscapes are vital to me in how I approach storytelling. I want to know where my characters are and how the land makes them feel. To hear that readers feel immersed in these places through my writing is wonderfully encouraging. That’s a moment when storytelling works.

I also have readers who respond to my work by offering their own fantastic stories. After reading The Heart Beats in Secret, one woman got in touch to tell me about her mother’s pet – a paralysed pigeon – who used to go on family camping trips. An amazing detail, isn’t it? Story-worthy, to be sure.

What’s the favourite reaction you’ve had to your book?

I was once offered a pair of bloomers at a reading. The real deal, Victoria bloomers with buttons and lace detailing. (I said yes.) Admittedly, the offer was in context and appropriate. I had just read a passage from The Aerialists in which my central character climbs across a rooftop in search of lost undergarments.

How hard was it to get your first (debut) book published?

I wrote my first book during a mentorship through the Humber School for Writers in Toronto. When I was finished and happy with it (or rather, ready to stop editing it for a while), I spent about a year sending it out to agents, getting silence, then getting feedback, trying rewrites and trying again. Then I spotted a post on Twitter about an open submission contest for unagented writers that the Borough Press was running. So, I entered and was delighted to win. The result was a book deal and representation from a topflight agent. It felt a bit like an arranged marriage after a long spell of dating, to be honest, but worked out well as the Borough Press went on to also publish my second novel.

What can you tell us about your next book?

I’ll simply say briefly that it is about early 20th C expat women artists living in Paris. And parrots.

How much (if any) say do you have in your book covers?

The Aerialists

With my first novel, I officially had a vote, but in actual fact, it was in the hands of my publisher. Which was fine. As a writer, you think you know what your book should look like, but it’s important to remember you are a writer, not a book designer. There are professionals who know about these things.

I did have more influence with my second novel, which was lovely. I wanted to include some of the Victorian newspaper illustrations I found in the archive, and the designer incorporated them beautifully. We had a good back and forth about that cover. One version ended up being quite Monty Python steampunk, which I loved, but it really didn’t fit the literary novel I had written. What we settled on is absolutely perfect for the story. I’m thrilled with it.

Were you a big reader as a child?

I’m honestly not sure I had any other personality. Always had a book under my arm or my pillow. And it could be pretty much anything. Adventure stories, classics, fantasy, sci-fi, poetry, murder mysteries. I spent one summer inseparable from the complete libretti of Gilbert and Sullivan. (I am a middle child…)

Do you have a favourite bookshop?

As a child, it was a small shop called the Bookery in downtown Ottawa. An exclusively for-children shop. I’d timetravel there now, if I could.

For second-hand books, I’d need to say all of Hay-on-Wye. A charming book town on the Welsh border, rabbit-warrened with bookshops. It would be easy to spend a year lost there and utterly happy.

But I’m also a sucker for a huge North American big box bookstore. Last summer, I was particularly impressed with the well-organised poetry section at Chapters Indigo in Toronto’s the Eaton Centre. A hard place to leave emptyhanded. (I didn’t.)

Any books that you’re looking forward to in the next 12 months?

I’ve been saving Anne Michaels’ Held until I hit my next deadline. I can hear it waiting for me.