Kate Maruyama
Author Interview - Kate Maruyama
Author of Alterations
Alterations is the story of Adriana, a young woman who works for Edith Head at Paramount's costume department in the early 1940s. She falls in love with a bit player named Rose and the two move in together. As Adriana's career blossoms, society and life interfere and Adriana makes decisions that affect three generations of her family.
1998: Laura, Adriana's granddaughter has left LA on the heels of a failed relationship and a career in film. She moves in with her grandmother in Baltimore to find some time and space to think, but her beloved cousin dies leaving her daughter, Lizzie, thirteen, who also moves in with them.
You can't choose your family, but you can't escape them either. Three lives twine together in the past and the present to take a closer look at how family, tight or not, makes up who we are.
Author Interview - Kate Maruyama
Author I draw inspiration from:
Natashia Deon. I adored (and taught) GRACE, a book about several strong women living at that difficult time when slavery ended but the South had not really caught up. I also enjoyed the Perishing but mostly I love how this author talks about process. Do the research but then you have to let the book do the work.
Author Interview - Kate Maruyama | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
For the longest time it was on a sofa with a blanket, a cat, and a cup of tea. But I'm increasingly drawn to our new hammock under our olive and lemon trees in our back yard. I read a lot but both places do not hold a guarantee I won't nap, too. I'm the family gardener, so I usually hit the hammock after epic weeding, raking, and pruning.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
Aki Ito from Naomi Hirahara's Clark & Division series. I love her young sense of curiosity, the fact that she doesn't ask permission to investigate and that she gets things done. I'd have so many questions about what it was like living in Little Tokyo in LA right after the war. And she's funny too, I'd love to dish with her about the neighborhood characters.
Author Interview - Kate Maruyama | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
When it finally happened? I have always written, but I never imagined the "author" part. I mean I expect that means the good stuff that comes because of writing? I hoped, but didn't plan it out. So when my first book, HARROWGATE opened up a world of writer friends, book events, panel conversations and things to me, I thought THIS IS COOL! I'm so excited for my first proper bookstore launch for ALTERATIONS and I've been just thrilled by everything by books have brought me since. I'm looking forward to the friends I haven't met yet through Alterations.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
Hardbacks get heavy to hold, especially as they are thick. I love a paperback or ebook these days. I adore audiobooks in the car or while gardening.
The last book I read:
Dispossessed by Desiree Zamorano. I loved it. Fell in love with Miguel and adored a historical walk through LA. I learned so much about the 1930s mass deportations of Mexican Americans.
Author Interview - Kate Maruyama | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
Computer. I can't read my own writing. Sometimes if I'm stuck I'll write in a notebook but interpreting what I've written becomes its own creative play. And I'm usually laughing.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Eva Thorvald from J Ryan Stradal's Kitchens of the Great Midwest. She was an outlier who made her way in her interests in spite of everyone. Totally identified with her being a weirdo in a small city, who grew up good.
Author Interview - Kate Maruyama | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
A costume designer for the movies. And rich enough to own a castle with tons of bedrooms where I could house my writer friends so they could write what they want to write in peace.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
Place I’d most like to travel:
Japan. I've never felt more welcome or taken care of while traveling.
My signature drink:
The Thistle, Whiskey, lime juice, bitters. Whiskey rocks mostly though.
Favorite artist:
Favorite is hard! usually what I'm looking at at a gallery. I really love Alexander Calder though and spent most of my youth thinking some day I'd be able to own a mobile of his (ah hubris!). I love that he had a barn in Connecticut where he made what he wanted. I love the moderns, Klee, Matisse, Dali, Kahlo, Kandinsky
Number one on my bucket list:
Traveling for a real length of time somewhere entirely new to me.
Anything else you'd like to add:
I wrote this book, Alterations with my whole heart. I can't wait for you to meet Adriana and Rose, and their trip through the 1930s and 40s Hollywood, which I had so much fun researching. I grew up worshipping Paramount costume designer Edith Head, who was a bit of a hero to me for doing a man's job of running a costume department when women weren't allowed that kind of thing. Being able to trip among the stars as if they were alive--Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, even Billy Wilder Makes an appearance--was a total thrill to me. As to our 1990s crew, Laura is a bit of me in the 90s working in Hollywood trying to break through that glass ceiling, although Laura's a bit of a hot mess, so more fun to spend time with. And of course it is the kid, Lizzie, 13 who helps Adriana and Laura find their way.
The book is dedicated to my friend Toni Ann Johnson who not only got me started on it when she asked, "you love old movies, why don't you write about that?" she did notes on two drafts and then, when an agent had given up on it, encouraged me to keep submitting the book. She said that she envisioned the bookstore event where she and I would talk. She said this for ten years! We are finally having that event next week at Chevalier's Books, the oldest existing independent Bookstore in Los Angeles. The store was founded in 1940 when Rose and Adriana's story takes place. It all feels like serendipity to me.
Find more from the author:
@katemaruyama on IG & threads
kate.maru.bsky.social
About Kate Maruyama:
Author Interview with Kate Maruyama
Kate Maruyama is the author of Alterations, The Collective, Bleak Houses, and Harrowgate and her novella Family Solstice was named Best Fiction Book of 2021 by Rue Morgue Magazine. Her short work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and she is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and winner of the Uncharted Short Story Prize. She served on the working Board for Women Who Submit, and the Board for the Shirley Jackson Awards. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles.
