Our debut author of the month

20th January 2020

Kate Elizabeth Russell’s debut novel My Dark Vanessa’will be published in hardback on March 31, 2020. It has been called the ’21st century Lolita’, ‘a well-constructed package of dynamite’ by Stephen King, netted a six-figure advance from publisher 4th Estate and will be translated into over 20 languages.

The book explores the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher. Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, ‘My Dark Vanessa’ juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society too.

Kate Elizabeth Russell lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Originally from eastern Maine, she earned an MFA from Indiana University and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Kansas. She started writing this explosive novel when she was just sixteen, knowing from that early stage what the emotional core of the story would be. Although the extraordinarily long process until publication often felt like ‘pushing a boulder uphill’, Kate never felt like giving up on the story. And in the meantime, Vanessa’s story – told in twin timelines, as a mature 32 year-old looking back on what happened to her as a 15 year-old schoolgirl – became more relevant than ever in the #MeToo world.

Throughout the lengthy gestation period of the book, professors and fellow writing students suggested that the subject matter was too difficult, that she should try writing it from the man’s perspective, that Vanessa was unrelatable or that Kate should focus on writing short stories.

Fortunately she persevered and My Dark Vanessa is already being talked about as the biggest debut novel of 2020.

The story may not have as strong a sense of physical place as many of TripFiction’s usual features, but we feel the themes covered by the author in this provocative novel justify her being our debut author of the month.

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