The 5+1 Not-About-Writing Interview with NYT Best-Selling Author Katie Cotugno

The author of messy, complicated feminist love stories has two new books coming soon (and her latest, You Say It First, is in paperback June 22)

New York Times bestselling author of 99 Days, How to Love, and the upcoming Birds of California, Katie Cotugno

It seems a bit unreasonable that a person you know can be a beyond-talented author AND every so often pop up on your Instagram with a picture of a Tartine bread loaf that looks like the kind of bread you’d request for your last earthly meal – THAT SHE MADE HERSELF. With the same hands that write novel opening lines that pull off that magic of being both literary appetizers and main courses. Want proof?

From How to Love: “I’ve been looking for Sawyer for half a lifetime when I find him standing in front of the Slurpee machine at the 7-Eleven on Federal Highway, gazing through the window at the frozen, neon-bright churning like he’s expecting the mysteries of the universe to be revealed to him from the inside.”

From 99 Days: “Julia Donnelly eggs my house the first night I’m back in Star Lake and that’s how I know everyone still remembers everything.”

The Tartine bread in question and, yes, this is a photo of the bread Katie made herself, not one I took from the official bakery website.

But that’s Katie Cotugno for you. She does very delicious things on the very regular. The New York Times bestselling author of How to Love, 9 Days & 9 Nights, You Say It First, among others – as well as the upcoming Liar’s Beach and Birds of California – has warmth that comes through in her work and her feed. Her semi-regular Five Good Things posts on Instagram wherein she shares five things — very specific ones — she enjoys or that make her happy at the moment (more on those later) were partial inspiration for these interviews I’m doing (they reminded me that authors are more than their works but also all the things that they do and enjoy that go into those works, whether they show up on the page or not). But she’s also sharp as hell and passionate about the things that piss her off, too, so fear not; no toxic positivity here. Just, she’s someone you want to break that Tartine bread with. Or discuss the best meal planning schemes with. Or, ask for her theories on how Bennifer did their second meet-cute (Are Bennifer meet-cuters though? Or is it more like a meet-hot?)

You Say It First will be out in paperback on June 22.

She took time from writing and preparing meals to freeze in advance of welcoming her second child to answer my questions. Read on and prepare to be hungry!

Ina’s coming. What do you serve? Possibly a more important question to know the answer to than the three people, living or dead, you’d invite for dinner.

IMP: Ina Garten is coming over. What dishes do you make for her? 

KC: OH MAN, I got the panic sweats just thinking about this. I like to plan for all social gatherings by asking myself, “What Would Ina Do?,” and I feel like the only way forward here would be not to cook but, as Ina says, to assemble. So I'd probably run around like a maniac and pick up a lot of different kinds of Boston-specific treats--cookies from Flour Bakery, cheese from Formaggio, an Iggy's baguette--to lovingly arrange on some kind of tasteful platter? Then I would nervous-barf, pour a stiff drink, and anxiously await her arrival.

French baguette from Iggy’s Bread of the World. And, when combined with the Tartine loaf above, maybe also what prompts me to make this a newsletter about the sexiest carbs.

IMP: So, my mom and grandma used to try to butter up a woman who shopped at the store they ran in an attempt to get her to share the recipe for her family's pizza sauce (the woman’s family owned arguably the best pizza place in my neighborhood). Sadly, they never succeeded. I'd love to know, is there a secret or legendary local recipe you covet and to what lengths would you go to get it? 

KC: Pre-pandemic, I would have said the whole fried chicken at Blue Dragon in Fort Point (best enjoyed with a cucumber lemongrass gimlet over ice), but honestly now I just want to go to the damn restaurant and have someone else make it and set it down in front of me. I DEEPLY love cooking, but I am so tired of myself. 

IMP: When you referenced your 12-year-old summer on Instagram recently, I had an immediate flashback to my  own and it was a MOOD. To you, what's the particular alchemy of 12-year-old life that makes it so instantly recognizable as a whole vibe? 

KC: Unlimited free time and nascent sexual awakening, probably? And the smell of a Tommy Girl perfume sample inside a fresh issue of YM magazine (hat tip to Lauren Morrill, who recently reminded me of how it felt to have one of those show up in the mail). 

YM from July 1996, also the year Tommy Girl perfume made its debut.

IMP: Before this pandemic election, I'd only ever done canvassing but your book You Say It First inspired me to phone bank this go-round. What is the most memorable (and rewarding or infuriating) conversation you ever had with a prospective voter?  
KC: I actually think the most deeply satisfying political conversation I've ever had is the one that has been ongoing between my husband and me for almost twenty years now (featuring such highlights as me stomping out of an Abercrombie & Fitch in 2004 after snottily informing him that the war in Iraq was about oil, to which he responded calmly "What about oil, exactly?" a question I definitely could not answer). He's much more willing to listen to different perspectives than I am, but he's not easily convinced, and the gentle pressure to be able to clearly articulate what I believe and why I believe it has been so good for me. Turning him into the kind of person who votes in municipal elections is like, in my Top Five Greatest Accomplishments. 

IMP: I love the 5 Good Things you do on your Instagram and I'm always impressed that they vary so widely from entry to entry. What are five good things you'd keep permanently on your list?

KC: Oh, this is such a fun way to think about it! 1) Weekly meal prep; 2) The way my kid greets me after her nap every day by groggily asking “What happened?”; 3) The season finale of the first season of Dawson’s Creek (as a writer, no matter what I am working on, I am literally always trying to recreate the feeling of being thirteen and watching the season finale of the first season of Dawson’s Creek; it is without exagerration the mission statement of my entire career); 4) how there is one rainy day in South Boston every spring where all at once the whole neighborhood smells like the ocean, and that is why I still live here; 5) Spending the entire day in a swimming pool.

FYI, yes, a creek can provide a watershed moment in the life of a writer.

IMP: Recently, you've had two books announced and, while you're well-known for your young adult contemporary romances, these will be Liar’s Beach, a young adult mystery, and Birds of California, an adult romance. How did you prepare for making the transition to new areas and has working on both in the same time span made writing in a new genre — and for potentially different audiences — easier or harder? 

KC: I think I've always kind of thought of myself as a person who wrote lots of different kinds of things—I started out writing literary fiction, and I've written a ton of fanfic, where you're always trying to mimic the genre and tone of whatever you're into at the time—so it didn't actually feel as intimidating as it otherwise might have to try two new avenues at once. And it's actually been really refreshing creatively! Also, I feel like I should be clear and say that both of these books are VERY recognizable as Katie Cotugno books; it's just that one of them has an attempted murder and one of them has graphic sex scenes. I'll let you figure out which one is which. 

You can find Katie Cotugno online at her website, on Instagram and Twitter. You can also send her real mail at P.O. Box 142, South Boston, MA 02127.

Other stuff I’m liking this week:

Self-promotion alert! I did a fun interview with Jennifer Mag getting into, among other things, the hidden power of imposter syndrome. The site has so many good pieces, so be sure to check them out!

This New York Times Magazine piece on Kevin Durant and the Brooklyn Nets is one you should read, even if you’re not a basketball fan. My wish is that we all could find something that makes us make sense to ourselves the way basketball seems to do for KD…

Maybe you don’t give much thought to jute and the shoes heeled with it, but my friend Carrie Mesrobian does, in the most astute takedown of jute you will find anywhere. This is from her Substack newsletter, and I think you should subscribe.

I recently started Caroline Kepnes’ third YOU novel, You Love Me. If you’re a fan of the TV series or the first two books, please check it out. (And if you haven’t read the first two books, I think I just gave you some summer reading.)

These sheet pan chicken fajitas. I use chicken thighs, not breasts, so they aren’t dry. My adjustments: I up the seasoning a bit; basically, I don’t use salt because most chili powder contains salt but check yours and I increase the amount of chili powder, paprika, and cumin in the seasoning by about double, and use more lime juice too. I also cut up about 6 peppers and 1.5 sweet onions for the marinade because once cooked, they’re excellent on salads or in bowls. Super simple for the summer and sheet pan meals are sometimes all I have time for on weekdays.