Set over the course of one summer, this perfect beach read follows a mother and her two daughters as they grapple with heartbreak, young love, and the weight of family secrets.
We chat with debut author Katie Runde about The Shore, along with writing, book recommendations, and more!
Hi, Katie! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I grew up on the Jersey Shore, where my family ran boardwalk businesses, and lived in New York City and Long Beach, California before moving to Iowa City, where I live now with my husband and two daughters—he is originally from Iowa, and his job brought us here, and I love the literary community here. My day job background is in teaching high school, and I also worked as a nanny for several years while I was in graduate school. When I’m not writing or doing kid stuff I love to go for a run with a podcast.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
I think I knew when we had to write these timed, practice standardized test essays in seventh grade, and I actually looked forward to them. I think I can still persuade you one way or the other on whether we should wear school uniforms in public schools. I have always loved an assignment since then and I still think my best work comes from due dates, assignments, and the imposition of some kind of form or container.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
First ever, Go dog Go, I remember that party in the tree. First chapter book I remember was called the Pee-wee Scouts, you got to cut out a badge at the end if you finished it.
One that made me want to become an author, probably The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank. I was seventeen when I read it and loved how it kind of followed different narrative rules than other novels I’d read
One I can’t stop thinking about is Crying in H Mart, I listened to that one on audio a year ago and have recommended it more than any other book this year—it’s beautiful and visceral, and I have a special place in my heart for musicians’ memoirs, their sense of timing and lyricism just always comes through. Michelle Zauner is such a performer, you can feel that in the audiobook.
Your debut novel, The Shore, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
nostalgic, tragic, humor, heartbreak, and love
What can readers expect?
You can expect to be totally immersed in Seaside, NJ, a Jersey Shore town that is not like anywhwere else in the whole world, and I have checked, it is wild and beautiful and gritty and gorgeous, and you can expect this local family to show you this tourist business hustle side of it. You can expect a tragic element at its core, a dad who is not himself because of a brain tumor, and also the other side of that, which is Brian’s daughters and wife coping through work, escape, love, online identities, music, and humor, which is infused into some of his hardest moments. And you can expect even though this book is short to know the whole family far beyond the scope of these few summer months.
Where did the inspiration for The Shore come from?
I grew up in Seaside, and my family ran boardwalk businesses from the time I was really little. When I was nineteen, my dad got this same GBM brain tumor, which is a very specific and strange way to lose someone, especially when you’re a teenager, and this role reversal happens very fast, and you are not quite done growing up. I really wanted to show this home stretch of coming of age for the teenage girls—first love, little rebellions, experimenting and negotiating friendships and big decisions, working—collides and coexists with a kind of caretaking that is not by a bedside, for most of it, but out in the world with this new-model person. And I also wanted to show the demands on the mom, Margot—I haven’t been through this kind of thing as a mom, but I saw all the ways she was also forced to reinvent herself through the lens of being a mother myself.
Can you tell us a bit about the challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
I was editing this book while my kids were doing Zoom school, and staying up very late before logging them in each morning. It was an interesting and intense time to be so immersed in a project that was so steeped in a place that felt so far away but so familiar, when travel was so difficult, and when we were all so isolated from each other.
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I had the most fun with Evy, the 16-year-old daughter, when she invents the identity of a 45-year-old mom in an online forum in order to interact with her own mom. I loved playing with the questions of what a 16-year-old’s perceptions of being a mom would be, what she absolutely nails and has some deep insight into and what she’s just clueless about as far as adult responsibilities and interests and life goes.
I also loved writing Margot and Brian’s 90s love story, in the fragmented way that makes you fill in the time between their communication with each other. That’s what my own memories of that time feel like now.
What was the path to becoming a published author like for you?
To quote Anna from Frozen, I think I always tried to do the next right thing: I took classes at The Iowa Summer Writing Festival, I did a low-residency MFA. I submitted to lit mags I liked and chose ones with fast response times who published work I liked, I paused for years and just listened to podcasts about writers when I was a new mom, and then finally wrote fifteen minutes a day so I wouldn’t lose my mind. I found writers I loved on Twitter, I found online and in-person workshops once I had something to bring. I wrote a different version of The Shore and queried in and got close a few times, then I rewrote The Shore starting in fall 2019, and sent out queries in May 2020. I was nervous about that timing, since it was such an isolating, emotional time, but I was also feeling reckless and not really myself and went ahead and hit send on that query.
What’s next for you?
I am in that early generative stage of a new project and having so much fun with it, it is a mess and I am looking forward to it being a more complete mess, and then making it into less of a mess.
Lastly, do you have any 2022 book recommendations for our readers?
Yes! I love the narrators in Post-Traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson and in Joan is Okay by Weike Wang, I will follow them anywhere. Teenager by Bud Smith just came out and is a wild, beautiful ride. Jamie Ford’s new book The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is out this summer and just rockets you through time. Acceptance by Emi Nietfeld is a memoir out in August about surviving the foster care system and getting to Harvard and the split between those worlds is really fascinating, and Ethan Joella has a new book out in November, A Quiet Life, it’s three characters that end up connected by their grief, all his work has a warmth to it that is I think a very rare thing to feel.
Yes! Already read this book! It’s so good.