West Trade Review: A Brief Q&A with Author Pamela Gwyn Kripke

A Brief Q&A with Author Pamela Gwyn Kripke

An excerpt from Kripke’s novel, Baby Goldman, is fortcoming in the Fall 2022 collection of Online Exclusives available in early September 2022.

Pamela Gwyn Kripke's fiction and nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Folio, The Woven Tale Press, The Barcelona Review, The Concrete Desert Review, Doubleback Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Book of Matches, Embark, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Dallas Morning News, Slate, Salon, Medium and other venues. Her essays have been published by Creators Syndicate, Gannett Newspapers, McClatchy and The Huffington Post, and her novel-in-progress received the Arch Street Press First Chapter Award. Kripke holds an AB in English from Brown University and an MS from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

WTR: How did your piece come to be and what do you want our readers/audience to know about your work?

PK: The infant who dies in the book would have been my uncle, and I heard about the incident in the way that Kate does. While I was curious about the details, I wasn’t haunted by them, so I wondered what it would feel like for an eight-year-old who was, to the point that the obsession affected her life and informed her relationships. Thematically, I’m hoping to raise questions about intergenerational loss, loyalty, the power of instinct, motherhood and the need to take care of those we love, as best as we know how to do.

WTR: What was the last book, story, poem, work of art that moved you?

PK: After reading Mary Gordon’s novella, Immaculate Man, I found myself thinking about how we balance competing desires, why good is typically linked somehow to bad, and what we do as human beings to manage.

WTR: Anything you’d like to say to our readers/audience?

PK: Thank you for reading my work. I’m so happy to have it appear in this beautiful journal, alongside so many gifted writers and artists.

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