Our Spotlight series introduces you to the people behind Perennial Press. In this post, we hear from force / fields contributor and writer Kate Falvey. Falvey talks to us about the many books she is reading (both fiction + nonfiction!), two people who inspire her, and how she spends her days.

What book are you reading right now?

I just finished a fantastic first entry in what I hope will be a new mystery series by Stephen Spotswood called Fortune Favors the Dead. And for nonfiction, I have been alternating between Scott Weidensaul’s A World on the Wing: the Global Odyssey of MIgratory Birds and Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World by Christopher de Hamel.

I always have a mystery to hand, preferably a series so I can immerse
myself in a familiar setting and hang out with familiar characters. I also just finished Donna Leon’s 30th book in her Guido Brunetti series set in Venice: Transient Desires.

Who is someone who inspires you?

The women in my life inspire me: my mother and my daughter. My mother is a vibrant, healthy 93 and my daughter is a creatively determined, self-reliant 2020 college graduate. I could go on about them for pages – and do in my work, actually, though indirectly – but the short of it is that both of them are curious, questing souls with a beautiful enthusiasm for living and learning.

Describe your artistic routine / regimen.

I am teaching via Zoom so much of my week still centers on my students – online classes, office hours, commenting on and grading projects… but I do find time to deal with my own work in between and on weekends. I am a night person, by and large, but for some reason I don’t write at night. I like to have an expanse of a whole day ahead of me to get lost in my work. I’ve always been this way – I can do “management” in dribs and drabs of time – but the actual composing has to be the thing I do that day. So I have long made Friday my writing day. And sometimes Sunday… It’s varied with the pandemic and my energy levels – but I still tend to want a full day to make new work.

Leave us with your favorite poem.

“Spring and Fall” by Gerard Manley Hopkins: one of my all-time poems to live by.

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Contributor Spotlight: Kate Falvey