Karen Powell’s Shelf Life

Karen grew up in Rochester, Kent. She left school at sixteen but returned to education in her mid-twenties, reading English Literature at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

Her novel, THE RIVER WITHIN was published by Europa in the USA and UK (2020) and Edizioni E/O in Italy. FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS (2023) was also published by Europa. A fictional reimagining of the life of Emily Brontë, FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS was named a Best Historical Fiction Book of 2023 by the Sunday Times and shortlisted for the inaugural Nero Book Award for Fiction.

Karen lives in York and is currently working on a contemporary novel set in Italy.

How and where are you?
I’d like to say in a book lined study or a Parisian-style café of the kind that doesn’t exist in York, but actually in my usual spot on the sofa in my living room. I can’t seem to work at a desk, must loll around even when writing, which then requires an inordinate amount of exercise to counteract the damage. For the first time in years, I’m writing full-time and it’s an absolute joy.

What are you reading right now?
A history of 16th C York for a potential future project. I’m being deliberately vague here! I’m also rereading Determination, the debut novel from my great friend Tawseef Khan. I was lucky enough to read an early version of this story about a Manchester-based immigration lawyer and her clients, so It’s wonderful to revisit it in finished form.

I’m trying to get my hands on Empireworld by Sathnam Sanghera, but­­­ the waiting list at my local library is immense. I read Empireland while researching my work in progress and it confirmed what I already suspected: that there were enormous blanks in my education.

I recently received a proof of The Unwilding by Marina Kemp and loved it so much that I’ve just ordered her debut, Nightingale. I also adored Dog, Rob Perry’s beautiful, brilliantly funny debut novel, and The Stirrings, Catherine Taylor’s moving memoir about growing up in Sheffield.

And, of course, watching or listening to, or otherwise consuming?
I do very little other than cook or go to the gym when I’m working intensively on a project. I might watch something on tv at the end of the working day but can’t seem to engage with much since Succession and Slow Horses came to an end. I did watch Ripley recently. Having loved the 1990s film version of the book I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy, but turns out I was wrong.

I’ve been dipping into the Behind the Glass podcasts from The Brontë Society which offers fascinating insights into the many objects in the Parsonage Collection. I may have finished writing my Brontë book, but I will never be finished with the Brontës!

Whenever I visit London, I seem to be in a tearing hurry, but am determined to find time for something cultural on my next trip down. I plan to meet my daughter, who now lives there, and go to the V & A or the British Museum. I’ve not visited for years, will probably view at least some aspects of the collections in a different light now that I’ve read Empireland.

I’m enjoying the female rage on Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department. The unashamed, massively petty grudge-bearing very much suits my current mood.

What did you read as a child?
The first book I can remember reading for myself was The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton. I was enthralled by that magical world peopled with pixies and gnomes and fairies. There was a man covered in saucepans too, and a moon-faced creature with a surprisingly balletic figure. I longed to inhabit that enchanted wood myself, to know these characters personally, a pattern which has replicated itself with every story I’ve loved and imagined myself in ever since. (I pity the childhood friends who were forced to enact both entire novels and weekly episodes of Charlie’s Angels with me, all the while keeping up with the punishing gymnastics regime I imposed, insisting it would enable us to compete at Olympic level. I’m surprised I had any friends at all).

I was equally obsessed with Anne of Green Gables and its sequels, as well as the Little House on the Prairie novels, Swallows and Amazons, the seemingly never-ending Chalet School series, as well as the Enid Blyton’s school stories. I sometimes think my own writing wouldn’t be so different if I’d stopped reading at the age of 9 or 10, that all I’ve aspired to do since then is meld L.M. Montgomery’s dreamy romanticism with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s spare, no-nonsense narrative style, with a dash of Arthur Ransome’s appetite for adventure thrown in.

Which books and/or writers have inspired and influenced you, and what have you learnt from them?
The first ‘adult’ authors I read were the Brontës, followed by Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Dickens, all borrowed from my mother’s precious collection of classics that she kept on the mantelpiece at home. These days I read mainly contemporary fiction, but the 19th century novel is so much part of my writing DNA that I don’t think I can ever quite escape its formal bounds. I enjoy more daring treatments of subject matter and form, the experimental exuberance of Lincoln in the Bardo, say, or Max Porter’s novels, have a fondness too, for the novel in its earlier, more ramshackle, rumbustious state – I’m thinking of Defoe here - but suspect I will always veer towards a traditional framework for my own work.

I have a special place in my writerly heart for F. Scott Fitzgerald. I find his effortless, elegant prose and the glamorous, dissolute Jazz Age set he both wrote about and lived among, utterly beguiling. I long to follow his creations to Paris or the beaches and hotels of the French Riviera – we’re back in The Enchanted Wood again – even when I know all is going to end in disaster. My work in progress takes inspiration, albeit obliquely, from the gorgeous opening scene of Tender is the Night which is possibly my favourite novel of all time.

What’s the worst review you’ve ever received?
One reader said they’d lost The River Within down the side of the sofa and couldn’t be bothered to retrieve it. I like to think it’s still there, occasionally causing discomfort. Another reader was so incensed by my portrayal of a depressed woman struggling to bond with her baby that you’d think I’d eaten her own offspring.

Tell us a little about your creative process.
My novels tend to begin with one or two scenes which have somehow landed in my mind, which then slowly, sometimes painfully, accrete a narrative around them. Character and psychology come more easily to me than plot, so structure is usually imposed further down the line. It’s the part I dread most because it means I must think hard and logically about the narrative rather than just feeling my way instinctively. Often, I must find the courage to smash the whole thing to pieces and rebuild it in a different form, sometimes several times over. This process inevitably makes me sulky and ill-tempered but there’s no getting round it: the reader will feel cheated if you fail to answer the questions the narrative has raised, or to adhere to the rules of the world you’ve created.

I have wonderful writing friends with whom I discuss all sorts of things but am pretty private when it comes to the actual writing process. I need to reach a certain point in a novel’s development where I feel it has acquired the necessary heft, before I can begin to discuss or share it with anyone else. Before that point, everything feels too fragile and tentative to expose to the air.

How has your experience of the publishing industry been?
I feel I’ve been very lucky. An early draft of The River Within won a Northern Writers’ Award back in 2017 and I will never stop being grateful for the sea-change that brought about in my writing career. New Writing North do incredible things to support and nurture writers based in the north of England. Since then, I’ve had two great agents and my novels were acquired by a phenomenal editor, Christopher Potter, who worked with dozens of world-class authors at 4th Estate before moving to Europa. I can still remember how it felt to be on the outside looking in though; the years I spent wondering if anyone would ever show a jot of interest in my writing.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Once, when I was hesitant about chasing an agent for a response, Tawseef Khan (Muslim, Actually and Determination) told me: ‘We have to hustle for our books.’ A few weeks later, having plucked up the courage to send a follow-up email, I signed with that same agent (he’d been so inundated with manuscripts that he’d not had time to look at mine till then).

I’ve never forgotten that advice, repeat it often to new authors, especially those with indie publishers. Independent houses work so hard for their authors, but they have limited budgets and resources to devote to marketing any one title. I think it’s vital that authors do whatever they can to help promote their own work. And now that I’ve overcome my idiotic English reticence, I find it fun.

What are you working on right now?
I started out writing contemporary fiction and my work in progress marks a return to that genre and to a landscape I find enchanting: the Mediterranean. The story, which moves between Italy, Greece, and England, is about tricky female characters and in-between places, the weight of our own histories, and the longing for what Keats described as ‘a beaker full of the warm South’. That’s as much as I’m prepared to say for now!