Kathryn Scanlan, taut new story collection, 'The Dominant Animal,' probes power relationships in uncertain times. She talks about L.A. and COVID-19.
The stories in Kathryn Scanlan’s collection, “The Dominant Animal,” published today, will probably be described as “flash fiction.” They are short, but their mood and imagery are lasting, and reflective of brutal truths of the commerce of human civilization.
I really like that description and I think you’re right. I love Los Angeles. It’s a very creative city, but not just because of the entertainment industry. It’s large and strange and diverse and in some ways very mysterious. I love the feeling I get hiking in the city’s parks, of being in what feels like an ancient landscape, then rounding a corner and getting a vantage of the skyscrapers downtown. There’s also a curious lack of historicity that feels freeing.
I grew up around a lot of animals. My mother comes from a family of farmers and my father comes from a family of racehorse trainers. In a basic way, I enjoy writing and reading stories about animals, but I suppose they also appear in many of these stories because they can become a way to parse power relationships.
During those 15 years I was working on a lot of other things as well, including “The Dominant Animal.”
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