"Meet the Teacher” offers a quick introduction to the talented writers who teach for The Porch. Today we welcome Kate Tighe, a Brooklyn-based writer whose work has been published most recently in American Short Fiction, as an Audible Original, and in Blackbird, Grist Online, Electric Literature, River River, Passages North, and Willow Springs. She earned her MFA at the University of Kentucky.

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 Tell us about a book you've recently read and enjoyed. 

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I’ve recently enjoyed the Mrs. Dalloway Reader, which contains Virginia Woolf’s early Clarissa Dalloway stories, along with relevant letters and diary entries; essays by contemporary writers about the impact of the novel; and the novel itself. Her fiction is so focused on consciousness that you might think it the antithesis to the subject of my class, “Writing the Body in Late Capitalism,” but her characters, at least in Dalloway, have a special classist eye for how people wear their clothes. 

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What’s one book or essay you return to again and again to help you think about writing, get inspired, etc.?

One of my favorite short stories is ‘Enough’ by Alice McDermott, which is a whole life compressed into a short story by tracing the lines of pleasure that the protagonist experienced. 

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What is your favorite writing rule to break?

I try to ground everything I write in a bodily feeling, really letting characters live in their bodies. I often hew closely to the traditional structure of Action, Background, Development, Climax, Ending, and sometimes, to get a first draft out, get compulsive about word counts. From there, I amplify or undermine elements to a reckless extent, what my writing teacher Manuel Gonzales called “breaking the story,” until it reveals something new. Rules broken depend on whatever that piece seems too timid or cocky about. 

That said, I admire how Edward P. Jones in The Known World and All Aunt Hagar’s Children flings ancillary characters deep into their futures in these beautiful short asides that make the narrative landscape feel rich and alive. I love how Helen Phillips' short shorts aggregate into something larger in the collection And Yet They Were Happy. I love stories that rise off the page to confront the reader in their seats, like “Writing Teacher,” by John Edgar Wideman. I guess my white whale is telling the story in some other, new story order, but I haven’t yet achieved it. 

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Music while writing: Y/N? 

I can’t write with any words on. But I do find that sometimes listening to classical music can help my ADHD brain focus.  

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What do you love most about teaching writing?

I love encountering student work, a reflection of their minds and creativity through the lens of imaginative play. What a gift. 

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For you, why does creative writing matter? 

For me, creative writing is about expressing what feels inexpressible, the truths that our bodies know but our minds don’t name, all that overwhelms and blindsides about the experience of being alive. It’s a way to honor somatic knowledge, by transferring that experience to the reader. When others can feel the thing, we can feel less alone. 

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Tell us why you pitched your upcoming class or classes. 

I am interested in the way that late capitalism acts on our bodies, requires our bodies in order to continue to work, degrades our bodies through labor, makes us into producers and consumers in very embodied ways, impacts our health and health care, incarcerates some of our bodies, pampers others of our bodies. I’m thinking, just now, of the whole "Get Ready With Me" genre of videos on social media. What even is that? 

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Share something that has inspired your creativity lately,  other than a book.  

I love listening to people’s disembodied voices on Zoom calls, especially when it becomes clear that they are also walking their dog or changing their sheets. The other day, a woman’s kitten attacked her as she was leading a meeting and she shouted, “Oh god!” in a way that required her to explain about her kitten, which I found hilarious and delightful. I think Zoom meetings, camera off, allow me to invent lots about their embodied experiences. Maybe a fiction pod?

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