A Writer on the Cape

For three years after college, fiction writer Katie Bellas ’03 spent her days as a children’s book editor at HarperCollins. Between 9 and 5 she edited stories with characters such as Fancy Nancy and Splat the Cat, but in the hours before and after work, Katie turned her attention elsewhere: to her own short stories. “Fitting in at least a little writing time every day allowed me to stay connected to my characters,” Katie said. When she wasn’t writing, Katie was connecting with other fiction writers during night sessions at the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop in Brooklyn. She was also preparing applications for a Master of Fine Arts program in fiction, which she later left HarperCollins to attend.

Now, years later, Katie’s dedication to her craft has earned her one of the greatest gifts an author can hope for: time to keep writing. As one of five fiction-writing fellows this year at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Katie has a stipend and an apartment, and is free to write all day. “Our time here is totally unstructured, which is great for the super-disciplined but a challenge for those of us who aren’t,” Katie said.

Katie is working on a collection of short stories, and her routine is to write for several hours in the morning and in the afternoon. That still leaves her plenty of time to discuss the art of fiction — or just relax — with the other fellows. “The built-in community at the FAWC is a blessing,” Katie said. “Writing is by nature very solitary, and people are by nature social, so it’s important to have others nearby to turn to for support. And for potluck dinners,” she added.

A host of other writers and artists have found the community, and the solitude, at the FAWC to be inspiring. The program accepts 10 writers and 10 visual artists each year, and among its alumni are Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists Michael Cunningham and Jhumpa Lahiri, and artists Ellen Gallagher and Lisa Yuskavage.

Katie is emphatic that, although a story is ultimately the result of her sitting down to write, the communal support of other writers is invaluable to her in forging ahead through multiple drafts and soliciting feedback that leads to a polished piece. Her colleagues at the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop provided such support, and in turn, helped prepare her for the two-year MFA program in fiction at Brooklyn College, where she further honed her writing voice. “It turned out to be a great fit,” Katie said. “It’s an intimate, workshop-based program that gave me a trusted community of fellow writers, as well as a wonderful mentor,” she added.

Katie still seeks out former classmates when she’s working on a story and wants trusted readers to offer their opinions. But she also believes that strong writing is the result of deep reading, so she frequently turns to favorite authors for inspiration. “I could reread Amy Bloom, Maile Meloy, Alice Munro, Adam Haslett, and Flannery O’Connor over and over — and I do,” Katie said.

While those writers provide Katie with insight into plot and character development, the writing instruction she received at Chapin plays a fundamental role in her stories, too. “The grammar lessons taught by Ms. Minakakis in Middle School are instrumental to my writing today,” Katie said. “Knowing grammar rules cold provides a writer the equipment with which to craft a story; it also allows her to occasionally break those rules, because she’s breaking them in a deliberate and meaningful way,” she added.

If you’d like to read one of Katie’s stories, in which the protagonist breaks the rules — albeit not grammatical ones — please click here. Or, you can keep checking in at your local bookstore, where the stories Katie is writing at the FAWC might be making an appearance very soon.