Title:Following Kate Brody down the Rabbit Hole

Although becoming an author was Kate Brody’s (C’13) childhood dream job, when she arrived at Georgetown University, she planned to go into medicine.

“I was stressed. I had been taking science classes, so I took one creative writing class for fun. I got derailed by that one intro class with David Ebenbach—who really became my mentor. He’s an excellent creative writing teacher,” says Brody. “Writing quickly became my whole life.”

Soon, Brody declared as an English major, later becoming a Lannan Fellow, and taking every writing course available to her taught by Dinaw Mengestu, Norma Tilden, and others who guided her development as an author.

After graduation, Brody completed an MFA at New York University—and completed her first literary fiction novel exploring grief. However, the first book bought by her publisher, Soho Crime, was the mystery novel that came next.

“Rabbit Hole was born out of a childhood love of mystery books and my adult devotion to literary fiction,” she says.

Brody’s Rabbit Hole follows a young English teacher, Teddy Angstrom, in the wake of her father’s suicide. While preparing for the funeral, she discovers his Reddit investigation into her sister’s cold case disappearance and picks up where he left off. As Teddy follows the thread of the mystery, she gets tangled in the web.

“Grief is often very boring from the outside,” she explains. “Mystery novels are very propulsive, the plot moves quickly, and yet most mystery novels where someone goes missing are also stories about grief.”

With Rabbit Hole, Brody gives the structure of a mystery plot to the effects of grief on a family. Maintaining the same first readers she had at Georgetown helped her stay committed to writing even as she changed genres. “

When I think about my writing education, I think about those Georgetown workshops,” she says.

“I met my husband, Chris Insana (C’13), who’s a writer, in a Georgetown workshop and he reads all my early work. I met an author friend, Jacquelyn Stolos (C’13), at Georgetown—we meet once a month to exchange work. I’ll also still send David an early draft of things that I’m working on,” she says.

“There’s a period after leaving the institution where you have to sink or swim as a writer. The fact that we all had each other to hold onto is helpful,” Brody explains. “Just meeting those people at Georgetown was huge.”

Learn more about the book on the Alumni Authors site >