Friday Five: writer, educator, and Short Story Substack winner Kate Kinney

In her short story “A Fait Accompli,” which recently won the Short Story Substack award for a story about family, Kate Kinney deftly weaves a poignant and powerful tale of an elderly widow who escapes her assisted-living residence for a holiday shopping spree but cannot escape the control of her power-of-attorney-wielding son nor certain elements of her past. Written in a first-person voice and steeped in realism, “A Fait Accompli” combines detail and seemingly mundane events with a view into the main character’s interior life and memories. The result is a whimsical story that holds the reader’s attention to the very end.

An educator as well as a writer, Kate chairs the Department of English at Suffolk County Community College in New York, where she also teaches writing and literature. She earned her PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she is a 2025-2026 Writers Institute Fellow, and attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, The Toronto Journal, Superpresent Magazine, The New York Times, and NomadArtX. As a literary scholar, she has studied the influence of another writer named Kate: Kate Chopin. She co-edited the book Kate Chopin in Contexts: From Theory to Practice and is the author of the articles “Kate Chopin: A Woman of and Beyond Her Time” and “Teaching Chopin Through Multimedia.”

Read on to learn how Kate Kinney gleans story magic from the everyday, how her work as a teacher influences her writing, and how binge-watching The Walking Dead informed her favorite essay.

1. Congratulations on winning the Short Story Substack competition with your short story “A Fait Accompli”! I really got into reading this story and found the characters compelling and realistic. What was the inspiration for this story, and how did you go about writing it?

For whatever reason, some manufacturers of men’s underwear often reinforce the crotch area with scratchy fabric. And this is why last year, around the winter holidays, I found myself in TJ Maxx, surreptitiously slipping my hand inside a package of men’s briefs to test the fabric for softness.

“What kind of oddball does this?” I thought. Then: “This would be a great beginning for a story.”

About 30 minutes later, in that line of crap they keep near the checkout line for impulse buys, I spotted a pair of rhinestone earrings shaped like pizza slices, with red faux gemstones for pepperoni. I almost bought them, but I had a shopping cart full of about $200 of items for other people and I was already over-budget with holiday spending. It seemed frivolous to spend money on myself at that moment, especially on something so whimsical and unnecessary.

The next day, a receptionist at a doctor’s office insisted that I was someone else—no matter what I said, she told me I was mistaken. Later that same week, I had an appointment to finalize my will—a free service that my faculty union provides. The lawyer went through my documents matter-of-factly, but when we got to the power of attorney form that I’d filled out in case of emergency, she put the paper down and looked at me intently.

“I need to emphasize,” she said, “how crucial it is that you absolutely trust whomever you’ve put here. POA can be easily abused. Unfortunately, I’ve seen it happen.”

These ideas—of trying to find gifts for your loved ones that won’t give them a rash, of sacrificing for others and regretting it, of losing your identity and credibility as you age, of worrying that someone you love will take advantage of your trust in a time of crisis—bounced around in my head for several months. Then, in July, I went to a writing residency at Wildacres Retreat in North Carolina to work on my novel-in-progress.

Whenever I felt overwhelmed by the novel’s scope, I took a break to work on shorter pieces. Since the ideas I describe above had been percolating for a while, once I got going, I wrote “A Fait Accompli” quickly. In my mind, I followed the main character, Susan, around the department store and created mini scenes for each stop along her way. It was really fun to write because I had no idea what would be waiting for her around each corner in the store.

Initially, the story was in third person. Then, the week I got back from North Carolina, I took a Poets & Writers workshop led by the amazingly talented writer and educator Sidik Fofana, which inspired me to change it to first person and lean into the unreliable narrator perspective.

2. Where do you find inspiration for your short stories?

I usually find inspiration for short stories from an image or a specific moment that lodges in my memory. That often coalesces around an idea borne of something I’ve read or watched, then I create a scene around this image and central idea and build from there.

Although they are fiction, I want the stories to seem real, so I am very specific in describing actual places, and I hew closely to what I know. I admire writers who can create whole worlds, Tolkien-style—my brother is one such skilled writer—but I can’t do that. I just don’t have that kind of talent. However, I am good at giving my characters a strong voice and presence by accessing and using my real emotions.

There’s a meditation technique where you recall a specific moment of happiness. Eventually, with enough practice, you can always call up that feeling, even in stressful situations. The way I write scenes is similar, but usually with crummy feelings instead of glad ones because conflict is more interesting than contentment. I re-envision a time when I felt sad, or scared, or angry—or jealous, or left out, or desperate—and I create an action or memory in the story that activates those same emotions in a character.

3. You also write creative nonfiction and essays. Which CNF or essay is your favorite, and why?

My favorite essay to write never found a publisher—it’s just up on my personal website. It’s called “By Defunding the Humanities, Colleges Risk Zombification.” Technically, it’s not my best work. There are some shabby transitions and places that just don’t make much sense. Despite its flaws, I still appreciate this essay and keep it live on my site because writing it enabled me to feel optimistic during a difficult time and my colleagues who read it told me that it helped them process and reflect on their experiences teaching during the COVID shutdown. It also justified my obsession with The Walking Dead: I wasn’t wasting time binge-watching the show—I was doing research!

4. As a professor of English, you spend a lot of time teaching composition and creative writing courses. How does that experience influence your writing?

I actually just finished my latest round of grading for my two freshman composition sections right before I started writing this. Okay—students have completely forgotten what a paragraph is and they really need to work on sentence clarity and what the hell is going on with capitalization? But their essays were funny, moving, poignant, clever, and innovative. Each essay had something amazing in it. We did substantial in-class drafting and free-writing, so I sifted through handwritten pages alongside the typed final versions, and it was really gratifying to see how their ideas took shape. I got to see their doodles, their notes, their lists, their crossed-out sentences. Grading their essays reminded me that writing is magic. It really is. Now that AI times are upon us, this maxim is truer than ever. The process of writing is life affirming, absolutely essential. I hope my students leave my class with an appreciation for their own unique voices, and I am so thankful that I get to help them hone and craft their writing style. It’s incredibly inspirational for my own writing.

5. What two or three nuggets of advice would you give to aspiring writers who want to write award-winning short fiction like “A Fait Accompli”?

One: Write and read every day. Caveat: Write what you want / read what you enjoy.

Two: Identify your strengths as a writer, then leverage them.

Three: In a writing group that I belong to, Amanda Tien, a terrific writer and all-around wonderful person, recently shared K.M. Weiland’s explanation of the scene/sequel structure. It’s a useful way to build suspense and organization into your writing, and it also combats writer’s block. These techniques have helped me write on those days when I feel like I have no idea what I am doing, the days when I want to give up and go rewatch The Walking Dead.

Follow Kate on Instagram at @keod623.