Kate Fagan on Redefining Creativity

Published Jan 30, 2025, 8:05 AM

Kate Fagan is best known for her work as a sports journalist and nonfiction author — but her first novel, “The Three Lives of Cate Kay,” is this month’s pick for Reese’s Book Club. She joins us to delve into how she overcame self-doubt about her creativity to make the leap into fiction, and how what she saw as limitations might actually have been her superpower.

Hey, Bessie's Hello Sunshine. Today on the bright side, it's an all new shelf life. We're talking ambition and going after your big dreams with author Kate Fagan. Her debut novel, The Three Lives of KK, is the January pick for Reese's Book Club and was one of Time Magazine's most anticipated novels of twenty twenty five.

It's Thursday, January thirtieth.

I'm Simoan Boyce, I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright side from Hello Sunshine. We have another shelf life coming your way today. You may recognize Kate Fagan's name. She's an Emmy Award winning sports journalist and commentator who made her mark on ESPN, frequently appearing on Around the Horn and Outside the Lines. She's also a New York Times bestselling author, known for What made Mattie Run, The Reappearing Act, and All the Colors Came Out. Now, she's stepping into a new territory with her first novel, The Three Lives of KK, and it's all ready Orese's book Club pick for January. Though it's fiction, the book is structured like a memoir, offering an intimate look at what it's like to chase big dreams. Because, let's be honest, we all have that seed within us, don't we. This story follows the journey of an elusive novelist who, for the first time, decides to reveal her true identity poof Trust me, you'll want to be along for the ride.

Ultimately, it's a story rooted in friendship, love, and boldly pursuing our passions.

Let's bring her in, all right, Kate, calling in from Charleston. Welcome to the bright side.

It's good to be here.

So you are known.

For writing nonfiction, but this time you took a really big leap with a fictional memoir. And I call it a big leap because at one point you admitted that you didn't think you had the brain for fiction, which I need to better understand. But you said you weren't sure how to tap into your imagination, and yet here you are proving yourself wrong. What was happening in your life life when you decided to really go for this and take the leap.

I think I was just.

At a turning point of sorts, even though I wouldn't have known that at the time, where I really was ready to not focus on sports and journalism anymore. And I could have been good continuing to do that, especially with everything happening in women's sports, but I also knew it was time to try something different and learn a whole different area, and that for me, the one that had always been calling to me was fiction. Like it was always the thing when I was like what industry would I love to like crack into, and it was fiction.

It was always like I always came back to that.

So I had tried so many times, but not with like my whole self, like.

Not fully invested.

Yeah, and then and for lots of reasons, we can get into like stories I was telling myself. But finally I was like, no, I am going to try I'm going to try this. I'm to try it for real.

Now, how do you get past such a deep limiting belief because saying that you didn't think you had the imagination for it, that's a that's a pretty.

Big barrier in your own mind.

Did you have a conversation with somebody that set it off for you or what was the spark?

I think what really was a turning point for me was setting out on this draft and like committing to myself that no, matter how the dicey plot points got, no matter how much I would write myself somewhere that I was like, that's not working, no matter no matter what, I was going to get to the end. So I put parameters in place to overcome what I thought was like a limitation of imagination and other problems I thought I had from the outset.

That makes sense, and just.

To double down in this imagination things. I think it is a I think people could relate to this idea. When I say that I didn't think I had the genation, it was because of how frequently I heard authors at their book talks or talking on podcasts talking about how they were as a kid and that they were like out in the yard make would make believe friends, and like the friends would talk to them and they would have a whole story, and like they and everyone would keep using this idea of like I have this rich imagination and like I just like had zero overlap with that. Like I would sit in the audience and be like, that is not my experience, Like my brain was always sort of working overtime, but in it like taking real life thoughts and like looking at them from every angle, and like I didn't think that was imagination, and so I had a disconnect about what imagination was as I started.

This project, What were you like As a child?

All I did was play basketball, like I you know, and that is like its own sort of creativity and imagination, But it's not the kind that we talk about when we think about painting or art or writing or music. It feels like very It's a very physical expression and can often be associated with like determination and hard work and not as much imagination in creativity. And so I just had this story about myself that I was like analytical and I was like detail focused, and I had all of the attributes of like somebody who can make themselves a successful athlete. But I never saw that translating to the kind of flourishing creativity that I think we often talk about.

I think everyone is creative, but I think we kind of get shoehorned into these binary boxes in society where it's like if I'm a basketball player, I can't be creative, or if I'm an accountant, I can't be creative. But I think deep down it's in our DNA, like we had to be so creative and innovative. Our ancestors to get us out of certain situations and to get us to where we are now, and you just discovered it later on in life. That's okay.

Yeah, And I think I also, you know, I think a lot about this idea of like finding your passion and thinking that that is a one off thing that you have to have your whole life, as opposed to being passionate about certain things for periods of time and then being able to move on and have that be an asset and not a detriment that you're like you can't stay too long or like you didn't commit fully, but like trying to actually harness that maybe I'm not the person who can do the same thing their whole life, but how can I make that work for me rather than feeling like I'm just flitting from thing to thing.

It's encouraging also to hear that it's really a mindset, I think, to sort of echoes among people feel as if you're either born with it or you're not, and your story proves that you can really tap into it.

Yeah. I think really unlocking different life levels of what my brain could do in terms of creativity was really satisfying in the process of it, because I think maybe a lot of aspiring writers or even writers, they inside their minds, it looks like you're building a story. And I really had the experience of almost chipping away at the story. So it's felt more like sculpting than it did like pottery.

Yeah.

Well, this theme of pursuing your passions and facilitating your dreams is woven throughout this book. And I know that it's not a memoir about you. It's not a memoir about your life. However, you do share the same first name as the titular character, so I'm curious because I do know that you incorporated bits and pieces of your own perspectives and your own experiences into this book. Yeah, where does Kate Fagan end and Kate k begin?

I really think from the opening paragraph, it's like I infused myself into this little girl who she is on the opening pages because she's Kate k this famous author. But in chapter one you see her as like a nine year old girl.

And I think on that very.

First page where I put her in her favorite Tom and Jerry's shirt, I feel like I sort of embodied her for a second and then she became like and then she went off on her way so I mean that is to say that I think right from the beginning, I needed a shell of somebody, and all I could think of were like these like memories that had stuck with me for reasons I wasn't sure of, just like pieces of things, and I kind of gathered those up and made the character of k K, who was born.

Annie, and I think then she just like became.

Her own person from there, Like I would never do some of the things she did, but I really relate to them.

You've described this book as seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo meets firstly Wins, two of my favorite novels that I've read in the past few years. So pretty great setup for people who haven't read it yet. Can you describe the plotline of the book?

Yes, So, The Three Lives of KK is about our main character, kate K, and she's the most famous author in the world. She's written this trilogy of books that have sold over one hundred million copies, and it's this dystopian franchise that has been made into blockbuster films and all of the cultural phenomenon that comes with something like that, except no one has ever known who Katek actually is because it's a pseudonym that she has written under, and despite magazine profiles and journalists trying to get to the bottom of who this Kate k is, the public has never known until this book, The Three Lives of KK, which is the memoir of explaining to you going back to her childhood and taking you through the twists of fate and the trauma that has happened that has led her to reject credit for this trilogy and this cultural cachet that very few people would walk away from unless there.

Was a reason for it, and this book tells you the reason.

It's time for a quick break. We'll be right back to shelf Life with Kate Fagan. And we're back with author Kate Fagan.

I think one of the things that readers will be really drawn to, and I say think because I was really drawn to it. It's the way you play with the idea of truth and perspective throughout the novel, and specifically tapping into the way we see ourselves, because I think oftentimes we see ourselves really differently than other people see us. Why was this something that you really wanted to explore?

Well, I think really this choice that I made at the beginning to frame this as a memoir. I did it only for the reason of just knowing that as somebody who has published memoir, I would understand the format and it would help me find.

A voice in this piece. And so that was really the motivation.

But then it started to help me along the way really ask questions about if I have this first person story being framed as a memoir, so you're getting everything from kate K's perspective, I was like, I've done that before, Like I have written that kind of book. I wrote a book about coming out on my college basketball team that had tension in it, and in the aftermath of that, I had people in my life, specifically like my mom and dad who were like, that's that one scene where you called us and you told us, we don't that's not how we remember it. And so I really was, in the process of writing Katek drawn to the idea of wanting to give readers like another level of understanding of our main character, because it'd be one thing for people to read, say, my memoir, and it'd be another for them to like go out to dinner with me and my mom and then understanding that like, oh, like here's the memoir and the story we told, and here's how the story is received within that memoirs world felt like a totally other door to open for readers. And I really wanted that because I don't think anybody in this in k K is an unreliable narrator any more than we are all misremembering small things or our brains are like putting us in different places and memories.

Like.

No one in this book is like purposefully trying to lie to you about their memories. They might be lying to characters within it for their own purposes, but and so I just really wanted to show how our memories can be like throughout without any nefarious intent, can really cause different, can cause harm in one case, or can send us on a path that we had no necessary, no intention of going down until life shifted in that way.

Kate, as you've been talking, I had this realization, and that is this thing that you thought was your flaw, your perceived inability to foster an imagination or this idea that you were kind of stuck in this memoir space and wanting to break out, that perceived flaw actually became your superpower with this book. Because the fact that you wrote it in the memoir format, which is something you're so familiar with, is actually what makes it so distinct and fresh for the reader.

It's kind of a cool realization to have when you realized that you had certain skill sets and other parts of how you operate that you thought wouldn't work for a medium. I really think it was like halfway through something clicked where I realized, like, oh, you think the nonfiction part of your brain is like, is an onus in this? Actually it is unlocking. It could unlock so much more if you let it. And like an easy way, yeah, an easy way to illustrate that is that, like whenever I would have to do profiles of people for a magazine, like usually an athlete, I'm on overdrive. Whatever time I get with them. Sometimes it's only like three hours or somethings. It might be like two days, and you're just like observing everything because you're like what matters, what matters?

What matters?

Right?

You're like, Okay, what kind of coffee? How did they call for that cab?

You're just you're desperate for the observation that you think unlocks them as a person, so desperate that often you're like trying to put things in places that don't work, just like make connections. And like halfway through writing this book, I was like, oh my gosh, like I have people that I'm right and anything. I can make up any detail I want and it can unlock something. And it was like, Oh, that part of my brain over there, Like, let's bring that part in because that is going to be very helpful here. And so that made writing this at times like a joy because it felt like, for the first time I was like, Oh, I can do creativity in my own way, and that was really nice.

I think that's such a beautiful message and realizing that the things that we think are flaws could actually be these latent superpowers. Having come from a career where you observed the lifestyles of these high profile athletes, did you take any observations from your work in that realm and incorporate it into the relationships between the characters in terms of ambition and how it impacts the characters. Yeah.

I think as a journalist, when you're very close to physically and oftentimes or like connected to people you would write a profile on.

I mean that right.

There is like someone who is high achieving, somebody who is like being received by the world in what many people believe is like the most the wonderful way you could like these elements of fame.

And value and money.

And I think there's two things that I saw with that.

I saw the strain it put on their lives.

Even the strain of like letting somebody like somebody write a profile on you. That's a strain because you are surrendering so much of how the world will perceive you to being filtered through somebody else, and like that that's really hard thing to like let happen.

And then also just the strain on their lives.

But the so and I tried to inject that into the Three Lives of Kate k because whenever you're observing closely celebrity of any kind, whether it's athletics or a movie or whatever it is, you're you're questioning the value of it, You're questioning the experience of it for that person. And I wanted my characters to be in that world doing the same thing, questioning the cost of fame, the cost of their ambition. But then also, as somebody who was writing profiles of people, you're also then dealing with your own ego as the profile writer, where like you're trying you're clearly in a subservient role of some sort, but.

You're trying not to see yourself like that, And so you've got.

Your own personal dynamics at play with fame and celebrity. Because there's not a lot of magazine profile writers who don't want their own little bit of all of that. So it just becomes this complicated world where people want a lot of things, but they're not allowed to communicate really honestly about all of the things they're going after and desiring.

Yeah, I love hearing you unpack all this.

Try to pour it into the book as much as possible, all of the obsessive thoughts about all of these things.

Yeah, that's a really healthy way of coping with obsessive thoughts. Just write a book. Other people do far more dangerous things.

Right to do a lot of like really detailed heavy workouts, like ninety minute long workouts, and write a book.

Good coping mechanisms. Yeah, there you.

Go, healthy ones for sure.

I want to talk about someone else who's poured into you as a writer. I know you mentioned how important it's been to share your writing with your parents, especially your mom. And I understand she just passed away, which is such a profound loss.

Kate, I'm so sorry, Oh thank you.

I'm curious how her presence, or even maybe now her absence, has shaped your writing.

I think.

Starting from the baseline of like having a mom who like just who really thinks you're great is like the luckiest.

Thing ever, and.

I really don't There's something about how deeply she believed in everything I did that felt like it just counteracted what the world tells you in a lot of ways, like you know, like almost like in a metric way. I always think when you talk about like something silly like a good Reads review, you've got like the trolls who are balanced by the people.

Who are always in your corner, you know.

Yeah, And like that having her always in my corner and being lucky enough for it to be then your mom, because you're like, oh my god, the person who brought me into this world also thinks I'm amazing, just like gives you a level of confidence that I don't think is easy to come by any other way, and that is infused in all of my choices. Just knowing that, and it's the thing I like, it's like that you know, you just can't replace that love. You just kind of try to figure out how.

You're going to keep it in whatever shape you can have it.

Still, absolutely thanks for sharing all that, Thanks for asking. We have to take another short break, but we'll be right back to our conversation with author Kate Fagan.

And we're back with Kate Fagan.

All right, Well, we've reached our favorite part of the show, which is where we have our Reese's Book Club authors read us a passage from their work. So let's go ahead and give our listeners a little peek into this scene that you're about to read for us. Will you set it up?

Yes, So I'm going to read from chapter two from Annie's perspective. So again, Annie is Kate k our main character. But this is like the name she was born with, and she's in Upstate New York where she grew up, and this is the moment when she meets her best friend best friend growing up, and it's nineteen ninety one in upstate New York. What you need to know about me and Amanda is that no friendship like ours had ever existed. We basically redefined the media, elevated it to an art form. Seriously. That's how we felt. We were like all young people in that way, in full belief that we were revolutionizing the human experience. Those older models all failures. Let us show you how real living is done.

I'll set the stage.

Nineteen ninety one, summer in upstate New York, small town theater camp opening morning. I was standing in line for registration. The girl in front of me was wearing jelly sandals. I complimented them. She made eye contact and said thank you for noticing, which awed me the self possession of it. We were nine years old, Amanda Kent ladies and gentlemen.

Turns out Amanda's home.

Life is only slightly better than mine. Her mom had died giving birth to her little sister, Carrie, and her dad spent all his waking hours beneath the hoods of cars running a repair shop in the next town over. Amanda and her dad they got along fine, but he was more like an uncle than a dad, and so she was especially close with Carrie, who was four years younger. The two were different in almost every way. Carrie had light hair and loved playing with dolls. Amanda was essentially the person Van Morrison is singing about in Brown Eyed Girl. One other thing to know about Amanda. She loved clothes. When we were young, she'd want me to come over and play dress up. Her dad had kept all her mom's old things in a box in the hallway closet, clothes and makeup, and other stuff grown up women cared about, like pantyhose, which seemed to me like a form of medieval torture. Dress up wasn't really my thing, but I'd bring a book and sit cross legged on the carpet at the foot of Amanda's bed. She never minded my indifference. She really just wanted an audience. She would disappear into the hallway bathroom and I'd read a few pages. Then she'd present herself in the doorway, do a quick spin and a catwalk, strutting in and out of the room. Nothing subtle in her performance. Clothes made sense on her, which one afternoon she explained was the entire point of fashion.

I love that past so much, Thank you.

So we talked about how it was important for you to include these different povs in your book, and one of our listeners has a question about if you had a specific lesson in mind for your readers.

So here's Tia.

Hi Kate, this is Tia.

I just finished reading your book, and I love how your book includes so many perspectives of people from Kate's life, Like there's a chapter from the man Man's POV and it was so heartwarming because I just loved reading from his point of view. And it seems like you were really intentional about what characters were included in your story. So I wanted to know was there a lesson or a certain takeaway you wanted your readers to understand about valuing others perspectives as you wrote the story.

That is such a fantastic question.

The lesson wasn't so much valuing other people's perspectives, although that is a fabulous lesson. I really wanted to use the different points view to show the way tiny miscommunications can have snowball effects in our life, and it also wanted to use them to expand Kate's world for you. And in that way, I felt like choosing points of view, even from very minor characters, sort of gave you like a bigger.

Roadmap to her life.

And the most important one we felt like in that endeavor was the point of view.

At the end and the wonderful question.

Just asked it of Carl the Mailman in one of these last switch of points of view chapters, that we really wanted to have somebody in the book who is showing you ideas about life from a perspective that had more experience, because so many of the characters in the book are young, and even still young as they're talking to you about their younger selves, and yet no one is at a point in life in the book except for Carl in that final chapter who can really look at some of the folly of youth and the folly of ambition and these different ideas from.

Like a different perch. And so it was less about like a moral takeaway from the reader.

But now that I'm kind of talking through that, I guess maybe some of the byproduct of it is just being more respectful and being more empathetic to the way someone else might see something or how something someone might impact somebody, because it's so easy to just assume we all have the same interiority that's like your default state.

Until you kind of knock yourself out of it.

I had to think about that for a second. Kate. I think you're right.

Now, you've crafted the best of both worlds in this book by blending memoir and fiction so seamlessly. And I've heard whispers that you might be combining your worlds again. Can you give us a glimpse as to what's on the horizon for you, what's next on your creative journey.

Yeah.

So, one thing that I really purposely did with The Three Lives of KK was didn't set it at all in the sports world. Didn't want really anything to do with sports in this book. There's like a passing reference to the Kansas Jayhawks, as like a nod to my wife who grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. But other than that, it was really purposeful because I had been wanting to kind of prove that I could write something outside of the sports backdrop as somebody who had been playing basketball since I was eight in college, and then it felt like it was like, can I define myself outside of sports? Was a big question I had, and so purposefully this book didn't. And now that I did that, as in like write it and feel like it kind of stands on its own. I missed the sports like I miss I missed that, and I think the thing I'm working on now it's another novel, but it's very much set in the women's basketball world. There's like a team in this long lost team from history because so much of women's sports is lost to history from the nineteen fifties. And that was like really important to me because I just miss being a part of women's sports. Like it is like those are those are my people, you know, like people who love women's sports, people play women's sports, Like those are the people that I want to be in relationship with because they hold so many of the same values.

I see that on TV too.

I feel like that once you write the novel, it needs to become a mini series.

Yes, my joke is always like we did all the men's sports. We did the horses, right, Like we got the sea biscuits, like we got the air bud, We even did the dog. So like now we can do some scripted women's sports stories, like there's some there's some amazing ones in the history that have just been lost.

Oh wow, I would have loved to see those growing up.

Yes, the fact that like a league of their own for me was like I had to just put myself on their team. Yeah, and even though there was so much about it, like I didn't play baseball, at least so much. I had to make believe. But their camaraderie, I was like, I want to sick. I want to be a part of it. It's like that was the one that's awesome.

Kate, thank you so much for joining us on the bright Side.

Thanks y'all, it's been really fun.

Kate Fagan is the author of the Three Lives of Kate k and the January pick for Reese's Book Club. It's available wherever you get your books. Tomorrow, we're popping off with one of our favorite bright Side best ties. It is the original Cheetah Girl, Raven Simon, y'all, along with her wife and podcast co host Miranda Miday. Don't miss it. Join the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect with us on social media at Hello Sunshine on Instagram and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok Oh, and feel free to tag us at Simone Boyce and at Danielle Robe.

Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

See you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.

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