Latest News
Reed Magazine's Gabrielle Rico Challenge Nonfiction Award
“Blank Spaces, Black Frames” is a sharp insightful look into the life of a mother struggling to embrace her own ending and the daughter who observes it. Even when her mind begins to fail, this mother kept some control by writing in her calendar and on post-it notes, the record of a woman reminding herself she is loved. And then came the startling ending. The essay just stopped. At first I couldn’t believe it, but then I realized there was such quiet power in that choice.” Click the underlined text to watch the In The Reeds interview with Kathryn Trueblood.
About The Author
Kathryn TruebloodThe Art of Storytelling and The Medical Narrative
Kathryn Trueblood has received the Rico Award in Prose, the Goldenberg Prize
for Fiction, and the Red Hen Press Short Story Award. Her work is situated firmly in the medical humanities. Her most recent book, Take Daily As Needed, treats parenting while chronically ill with the desperado humor the subject deserves (University of New Mexico Press, 2019). Her previous novel, The Baby Lottery, dealt with the repercussions of infertility in a female friend group (a Book Sense Pick in 2007). Her story collection, The Sperm Donor’s Daughter, takes a look at assisted reproduction and received a Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize in 2000. Trueblood’s stories and articles have been published in Poets & Writers Magazine, the Bellevue Literary Review, Medical Literary Messenger, The Los Angeles Review, Glimmer Train, The Seattle Review, Zyzzyva, and others. She is a professor of English at Western Washington University and a faculty member of The Red Badge Project, a non-profit organization serving active-duty soldiers and veterans in Washington through the use of storytelling techniques. The anthology she edited, Stories Deployed: The Veteran Chronicles, won the Magazine of the Year Award from the Washington VFW Association in 2022.
Book Collection
Explore the Thorny Questions that Medical Developments Pose for the Human Spirit
Fiction
Take Daily As Needed
Fiction
Diary of a Slut
Fiction
The Baby Lottery
Fiction
The Sperm Donor's Daughter
Reviews
Hear from Our Readers
“Sag Harbor’s Permanent Press has an obstinate belief in literary fiction’s burgeoning talents. Its latest discovery is Kathryn Trueblood, whose novella is a psychologically nuanced meditation on identity and makeshift bonds."
“This is the kind of cross-wired writing that leads to somewhere new. The standout is the 100-page title piece (which) erupts with wisdom about who is responsible for what in a pregnancy.”
“Now in their late thirties, five college friends discover that their past history can’t maintain their bonhomie, especially when their views and values strongly diverge. Each woman takes center stage in alternating chapters that converge without necessarily overlapping. Trueblood draws blood as these friends confront the disappointment of their own choices as well as those of one another. Graphic in its depiction of obstetrical complications, this book presents a beautifully drawn yet harsh portrait of love in its varied permutations and how finding happiness really is a matter of chance. Highly recommended for literary fiction collections."
“Divorce, kids, careers, boyfriends, finding yourself—Trueblood’s debut novel announces itself early on as mainstream women’s fiction. Trueblood’s sympathetic juggling between the various points of view proves an effective way of showing that simple formulas don’t work for today’s women.”
“A writer whose fiction has largely focused on the impact that medical intervention, technology, and culture has on our lives, Trueblood’s latest novel follows Maeve, a chronically ill single mother of two demanding kids. Her father is in the early stages of dementia and her mother has volatile mood swings. Anyone who has ever tried to hold it all together when there is too much to do will relate to Maeve’s plight.”
“This novel in stories follows Maeve Beaufort through the maze of adulthood. Early stories chronicle ambulance rides for her highly allergic daughter; a diagnosis of Asperger’s for her elementary-age son; and a divorce from her children’s father….Later in the novel, Maeve’s aging parents try her nerves and break her heart, and a long battle with Crohn’s disease makes it difficult to hold down a job. Teenage children present the most colossal challenge of all: they force Maeve to reckon with the mistakes of her past. Trueblood makes great use of the unconventional form, molding Maeve’s story into a vivid portrait of independent womanhood.”
“The solid latest from Trueblood (The Baby Lottery) is a novel in nonlinear stories told from the perspective of Maeve, a mother of two and paralegal in Washington State dealing with Crohn’s disease. Throughout, Trueblood confidently sculpts her protagonist….Readers will appreciate the character wrinkles each new story turns up.”
Events
Event Schedule
26-28
June, 2025
Chuckanut Writer's Conference
- 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM, May 14, 2023
- Bellingham, WA
“The language in Kathryn Trueblood’s new collection of stories, The Sperm Donor’s Daughter, blooms with the allure and heady fragrance of jungle flora—exotic saps waiting to be tapped; potent cures lurking, as yet undiscovered. Even her characters—common place citizens at first glance—harbor a drop of wild blood that curdles and froths against the threat of too much domesticity. In an uncertain and infinitely complex world, Trueblood’s stories demand that we sit up, pay attention, and care.”