What is Kathleen West reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Kathleen West, author of Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes.

Her entry begins:

I recently read and loved Unscripted by Nicole Kronzer. This YA gem arrives from Abrams on April 21st, and adult and teen readers of contemporary fiction will want to pick it up. Here’s what you’re getting into: Improv phenom Zelda Bailey-Cho arrives at her comedy summer camp with her boots laced and ready for action. She knows how the summer will unfold: she’ll make the Varsity improv team, dazzle in the end-of-summer showcase, and start down a certain path to SNL.

But almost immediately, things seem not-quite-as-she-imagined. First, there are only five girls of the 175 campers at Rocky Mountain Theater Arts, and their counselor is MIA. Ben, the handsome Varsity coach is definitely interested in Zelda, but perhaps for insidious reasons. And none of the improv rules Zelda’s memorized—she keeps her bible, The Scene Must Win by comedy legend and camp founder, Jane Lloyd, always on hand—seem to help her in...[read on]

About Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes, from the publisher:

Perfect for fans of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Small Admissions, a wry and cleverly observed debut novel about the privileged bubble that is Liston Heights High—the micro-managing parents, the overworked teachers, and the students caught in the middle—and the fallout for each of them when the bubble finally bursts.

When a devoted teacher comes under pressure for her progressive curriculum and a helicopter mom goes viral on social media, two women at odds with each other find themselves in similar predicaments, having to battle back from certain social ruin.

Isobel Johnson has spent her career in Liston Heights sidestepping the community’s high-powered families. But when she receives a threatening voicemail accusing her of Anti-Americanism and a liberal agenda, she’s in the spotlight. Meanwhile, Julia Abbott, obsessed with the casting of the school’s winter musical, makes an error in judgment that has far-reaching consequences for her entire family.

Brought together by the sting of public humiliation, Isobel and Julia learn firsthand how entitlement and competition can go too far, thanks to a secret Facebook page created as an outlet for parent grievances. The Liston Heights High student body will need more than a strong sense of school spirit to move past these campus dramas in an engrossing debut novel that addresses parents behaving badly and teenagers speaking up, even against their own families.

Visit Kathleen West's website.

The Page 69 Test: Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes.

Writers Read: Kathleen West.

--Marshal Zeringue