Reading for Joy
Katherine Center’s comfort reads will get you through everything from a pandemic to love to everyday life.
How might you describe the bestselling fiction writer, entrepreneur, public speaker and 1999 UH graduate Katherine Center? In a word, joy. Both her home and her website greet visitors like a glorious summer afternoon, bursting with flowers. You could say her aesthetic reflects her authorial mission: to shine light, spread happiness, have fun. Let other writers corner the doom-and-gloom market. Center is concerned with the opposite end of the emotional spectrum.
“I want to write stories that make my life better and make readers laugh and swoon and notice the good things we tend to ignore because we're so focused on things that make us crazy,” Center gushes. No wonder the adaptation of her book “The Lost Husband” became Netflix's most popular movie during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
When we caught up with her last summer, Center was editing her tenth book, promoting her ninth and anticipating the release of her second Netflix project. The competing projects make for cognitive juggling, but Center finds the pivot from creation to publicity fits her half-introvert, half-extrovert personality. She's one part “sofa cat” reader, one part “like a dog looking at its leash, excited to get out there” on book tour.
Relatable Struggles
Center is on a mission to strengthen human understanding, since stories teach us to be empathetic.
“When the character wants something, you want it too,” Center says. “When they're scared, you're scared, and when they fall in love, you fall in love. If a writer's done a good job, it really feels like it did happen to you.”
Katherine Center novels all feature relatable characters who get knocked down and pull themselves up by finding a wellspring of resiliency and then, of course, love.
“If a writer's done a good job, it really feels like it did happen to you.”
“The main characters go through a struggle, but then there's this countermelody of finding an intense human connection,” Center says.
Jane Austen is Center's primary literary inspiration, discovered when her older sister pressed “Pride and Prejudice” into her unwilling teenage hands. “What does this old lady have to teach me about life?” Center scoffed. A few paragraphs were enough to deliver the humbling answer. Ever since, she's been influenced by Austen's witty explorations into the absurdity of the human condition.
“She sees how ridiculous we are, but she's compassionate with us,” Center muses. And, “her books are templates for a lot of the tropes we're all still loving.”
Good Books
While Austen is still a touchstone, Center has broadened her conception of “good” literature. “I grew up with this misconception that books were a hierarchy, with literary fiction up at the top descending down towards embarrassing stuff you'd get at the grocery store. It took me a long time to realize that stories are a universe.”
The story universe is not universally available to every child, though — which was the impetus for Center's 2018 TEDx Talk, “We Need to Teach Boys to Read Stories About Girls.” Girls, she'd noticed, read books about boys all the time, while boys are not encouraged to read books with female protagonists.
“It took me a long time to realize that stories are a universe.”
Ironically, “Pride and Prejudice” is no longer on the curriculum at Center's own high school, “because they couldn't get the boys to read it!” If half the population doesn't know what it feels like to be scared or to fall in love as a girl, Center says, we should not then be surprised when, as adults, “We just don't want to put ourselves in women's shoes.”
Bright Futures
Center's path from reader in fuzzy slippers to well-known publishing industry insider started at the University of Houston. As a native Houstonian with literary ambitions, Center heard about UH's creative writing program long before applying.
“At least once a month somebody says, 'You have a really great program here.'” The master's program offered validation and a literary community that helped her take herself seriously in the face of strong headwinds. Pursuit of the dream of writing professionally, she found, was not for the faint of heart. “If you're gonna stick with it, you need to know that people out there think your work is good, and not just your mother,” Center says.
These days, Center's fan base contains multitudes beyond her mom, with many fans reaching out through email and social media posts expressing gratitude for bringing hope in dark times.
“They'll tell me that someone they loved was in the hospital, they were really stressed out, and this was the book they carried around close to their hearts.”
People around the world clung to “The Lost Husband” in the summer of 2020. At first, it was just a “little Texas independent film,” but then, at a time when “stressed out” had taken on new meaning, Netflix bought it. The tale of grief, resiliency and stirring romance proved to be the right story at the right time. Soon, word of mouth took over where traditional promotion couldn't. It shot to No. 1 on its second day of streaming and became one of Netflix's Top 25 shows of the year and a Top 10 movie in 30 countries.
Center's pandemic writing project and primary coping mechanism for making it through those “gray and weird times,” she says, was her ninth novel, “The Bodyguard,” released July 19. For this one, she put to work all the powers of mood elevation that a novel can offer. She calls it “the brightest, most curious and most fun” of her stories. But while she may have made progress in meeting her mission, she's motivated to keep at it. Empathy needs tending.
“Learning how to have compassion for each other is going to be the thing that saves us,” Center says. “If we save ourselves, that'll be what does it.”
Katherine Center’s characters brought brightness to millions of people during dark pandemic days. Her next story, she says, looks even brighter.
Katherine Center’s characters brought brightness to millions of people during dark pandemic days. Her next story, she says, looks even brighter.
Bright Futures
Center's path from reader in fuzzy slippers to well-known publishing industry insider started at the University of Houston. As a native Houstonian with literary ambitions, Center heard about UH's creative writing program long before applying.
“At least once a month somebody says, 'You have a really great program here.'” The master's program offered validation and a literary community that helped her take herself seriously in the face of strong headwinds. Pursuit of the dream of writing professionally, she found, was not for the faint of heart. “If you're gonna stick with it, you need to know that people out there think your work is good, and not just your mother,” Center says.
These days, Center's fan base contains multitudes beyond her mom, with many fans reaching out through email and social media posts expressing gratitude for bringing hope in dark times.
“They'll tell me that someone they loved was in the hospital, they were really stressed out, and this was the book they carried around close to their hearts.”
People around the world clung to “The Lost Husband” in the summer of 2020. At first, it was just a “little Texas independent film,” but then, at a time when “stressed out” had taken on new meaning, Netflix bought it. The tale of grief, resiliency and stirring romance proved to be the right story at the right time. Soon, word of mouth took over where traditional promotion couldn't. It shot to No. 1 on its second day of streaming and became one of Netflix's Top 25 shows of the year and a Top 10 movie in 30 countries.
Center's pandemic writing project and primary coping mechanism for making it through those “gray and weird times,” she says, was her ninth novel, “The Bodyguard,” released July 19. For this one, she put to work all the powers of mood elevation that a novel can offer. She calls it “the brightest, most curious and most fun” of her stories. But while she may have made progress in meeting her mission, she's motivated to keep at it. Empathy needs tending.
“Learning how to have compassion for each other is going to be the thing that saves us,” Center says. “If we save ourselves, that'll be what does it.”
NETFLIX & SMILE
Stay tuned for the next Katherine Center adaptation on Netflix: “Happiness for Beginners,“ starring Ellie Kemper of “The Office.“
NETFLIX & SMILE
Stay tuned for the next Katherine Center adaptation on Netflix: “Happiness for Beginners,“ starring Ellie Kemper of “The Office.“
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