Where Connection Breaks: An Interview with Liz Kellebrew
Liz Kellebrew writes at the intersection of imagination and embodiment—where the natural world, isolation, and interior life blur into something stranger and more luminous. Her work resists easy binaries, instead exploring connection, disconnection, and the fragile ecosystems of human experience. In this conversation, Kellebrew talks about her writing practice, creative obsessions, and the strange, often beautiful mechanics behind her work.
What inspired you to start writing?
My mom read lots of stories to me as a kid, so when I learned to read and write, I decided to write my own. My first story was about a rabbit eating blackberries, written at age 6 on obsolete dot matrix printer paper that my grandma brought home from work.
Do you have a writing routine or ritual? If so, what is it?
I try to sit down and write at least five days a week. It can be during a break at work or a weekend morning at home, as long as I make time to focus on it. I tend to slip into daydreaming when I envision what I’m about to write, which can sometimes put me to sleep, so I deal with this by giving my brain a little extra stimulation. Listening to music or sipping on seltzer seems to do the trick.
How do you handle writer's block?
Rage cleaning and/or distraction in novel or TV form.
Which of your characters do you relate to the most and why?
In my novel-in-progress, a teenage girl named Hailey lives on an island and is homeschooled by her parents. The reasons for her isolation are a little different from mine growing up, but I was also homeschooled. Learning to be okay with loneliness and learning how to channel boredom into creativity was a large part of how I became a writer.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about yourself through writing?
Between school, work, and my own various creative projects, I estimate I’ve written around a million words in my lifetime. I’m surprised (and thrilled!) that I still have so much to learn about writing. I don’t think it will ever get boring.
If you could have dinner with any three authors, living or dead, who would they be and why?
Can Xue, Virginia Woolf, and Ursula K. LeGuin, because they have similar aesthetics but very different subject matter. I’d learn so much by hearing them in conversation with each other.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received about writing?
My friend Pi said it was important for me to write every day. She wasn’t wrong!
Can you describe your writing space?
I finally have my own home office with a big window and lots of green trees outside. A desk, bookcase, electric piano, and guitar share the space. I also have a star chart (astronomical, not astrological) and a print of J.R. Slattum’s painting, The Woman Who Paints Butterflies.
What’s your favorite part of the writing process?
My first love is the imagining and discovery process. Starting a new story or book has all the thrill of a first crush, and none of the disappointment. However, as I’ve practiced my writing, I’ve also learned to love the revision process. That’s where I can identify and deepen layers of meaning, examine and understand character motivations, revisit my words and replace some of what I wrote with what I actually meant. I put myself in the reader’s head and try to see what they see, not what I imagined, and this process of othering really helps me figure out how to get the story where it wants to go.
How do you develop your characters?
I practice putting myself in their shoes, imagining how things look and feel from their perspective. I subject them to adversity and see how it brings out the best and/or worst in them, which sets them on a path to self-discovery or self-annihilation (or just survival, which can be a major accomplishment in itself).
How do you balance creating a world that feels real while keeping it imaginative?
To ground readers in a feeling of reality, I focus on the senses and how things are experienced in the body. But when it comes to setting and plot, I let myself visualize the scenes, like watching a movie. I spent a lot of time daydreaming as a kid and I guess all the practice paid off.
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve had to research for a book?
The ancient Persian practice of using honey as embalming fluid.
Do you prefer writing heroes or villains, and why?
My characters don’t exist on a hero/villain spectrum, but on a connection/disconnection spectrum. I think the most heroically intentioned actions can still lead to awful consequences, and while purely villainous people rarely exist, there are damaged people who end up doing terrible things. It is the state of people’s connectedness (with others, and/or with the natural world) that influences their thoughts and actions, and I prefer to explore that in my writing.
What’s the most difficult scene you’ve ever written?
Henry’s death in my second book, The River People. The event could be experienced in so many ways, both by different people and by the same people when they relived it at different times. There is a reason the book circles back to different renditions of that scene. The character who witnesses the death re-experiences it over and over again throughout their lifetime. Like ripples in a pond when a stone drops to the bottom.
How do you handle criticism and negative reviews?
Outrage, followed by a stiff drink, followed by moving the fuck on. Practicing my writing is the only way I’ll get better, and anything that distracts me from that is a trap.
What’s the most rewarding part of being an author?
The warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that my book has grown up and gone out into the world to meet new friends and lovers. Knowing that my book will continue to grow as readers bring their own responses to it, because a book is just the beginning of a two-way conversation.
How do you stay motivated when you don’t feel like writing?
I go read something I enjoy until I fall in love with the idea of writing my own stories again.
What do you hope readers take away from your books?
New thoughts, new experiences, new emotions. I hope they feel some kind of engagement with the book. That the experience feeds the part of them that is hungry for art and for story.
Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what kind?
It has to be stimulating but not too distracting. I like a good beat, surprising harmonies, some sweet synth. Shoegaze, punk, or lofi depending on my mood. Artists on heavy rotation right now: Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory, Cocteau Twins, Girl Scout, Turnstile, Amyl & the Sniffers, Bully, Twen, Nujabes.
How do you decide on the titles of your books?
I try out dozens of different titles as I write my drafts, but I don’t decide on one until after the final draft is finished. I look for a title that captures the theme in a meaningful, concise, and eye-catching way.
What’s a fun fact about you that most of your readers don’t know?
When I was a teenager, I won a mountain bike in a drawing at Sears. I haven’t won anything since.
In my twenties, I worked at a small engine repair shop and earned a Honda Top Tech certification. I still have the micrometer they gave me with the Honda logo on it, and a scar where a lawn mower blade sent a loose bolt flying into my leg at hurricane speed.
In my thirties I went skydiving, and I was totally ready to do it again until I watched the video footage the skydiving company took of me. Seeing myself hurtling through the atmosphere gave me more anxiety than jumping out of the plane in the first place!
If you could have one superpower to help you with your writing, what would it be?
Can I pick two? The power to create more time in the day, and the power to translate the scenes I imagine into written text without actually having to write them down.
What are you working on next? Any upcoming projects you can share with us?
I’m currently revising a braided climate fiction + magical realism novel that follows an isolated young girl living on a Canadian island. I’m drawing inspiration from osprey documentaries and fairy tales such as The Children of Lir and The Little Mermaid.
Kellebrew’s work reminds us that writing isn’t about neat answers—it’s about staying in the tension, the uncertainty, the ripple effects. Her focus on connection over morality, embodiment over abstraction, and curiosity over certainty makes her work feel alive in a way that lingers long after the page.
If you’re drawn to fiction that unsettles, deepens, and expands what story can do, seek out Liz Kellebrew’s books—WATER SIGNS, CLOISTERED, and THE RIVER PEOPLE—and step into the worlds she’s built. Read her. Teach her. Talk about her work. And most importantly—let it change the way you see what a story can hold.
