Interview: Author ‘Kathleen West’ Talks Her Great Debut Novel Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes

Kathleen West is a writer, teacher, reader, and semi-professional minivan driver. A life-long Minnesotan, she holds degrees from Macalester College and the University of Minnesota. Her debut novel, Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes, will be out from Berkley (Penguin Random House) on February 4, 2020. She lives in Minneapolis with her hilarious husband, their two sporty sons, and an ill-behaved goldendoodle.

Check out her website here, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The book is in stores on Tuesday, February 4th from Berkley. You can listen below to the interview.

When a devoted teacher comes under pressure for her progressive curriculum and a helicopter mom goes viral on social media, two women at odds with each other find themselves in similar predicaments, having to battle back from certain social ruin.

Isobel Johnson has spent her career in Liston Heights sidestepping the community’s high-powered families. But when she receives a threatening voicemail accusing her of Anti-Americanism and a liberal agenda, she’s in the spotlight. Meanwhile, Julia Abbott, obsessed with the casting of the school’s winter musical, makes an error in judgment that has far-reaching consequences for her entire family.

Brought together by the sting of public humiliation, Isobel and Julia learn firsthand how entitlement and competition can go too far, thanks to a secret Facebook page created as an outlet for parent grievances. The Liston Heights High student body will need more than a strong sense of school spirit to move past these campus dramas in an engrossing debut novel that addresses parents behaving badly and teenagers speaking up, even against their own families.