KATE COHEN IS A contributing columnist for The Washington Post. She’s the author of three books, including We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too), just out from Godine. Among the many things we discussed, we took on the concept of how to write with authority. I think you’ll find the conversation fascinating. Listen in and read along.
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Kate: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Marion: Well, it’s a joy to have you here and I’ve been reading you for a long time, starting about 20 years ago maybe when you published a book titled A Walk Down the Aisle: Notes on a Modern Wedding, which I read, and loved, particularly because it addressed many of the questions and real discomfort I had when I married, but never brought up to anyone. I mean, I refused an engagement ring and in that refusal came in touch with a lot of my negative feelings about the prescribed rituals of marriage, and yet I walked down the aisle.
Kate: So many people do.
Marion: So, your book made me feel the benefit produced from inquiring into something we otherwise take for granted, and I realized that while that’s really early Kate, it’s kind of your voice. You question what you think. You say do you actually know what you believe about that? So let’s jump in and talk about voice. What can you tell the writers listening who are struggling to find theirs about developing your own?
Kate: I think you’re absolutely right that part of my voice is what do you really think about that? And I have to say that it comes from basically a question to myself, what do I really think about this? Or even, what was I thinking? And I feel like turning a questioning eye on everyday life and the politics that sort of simmer underneath everyday life. That is really what I am most interested in. And so a lot of my long-term projects, but also just my one-off Washington Post columns come from that kind of, wait, why did this make me feel so angry? Or why did my kids react this way to something but my husband reacted this other way to something? Or what do my own choices or my own discomfort with those choices mean if I take a step back and I look at them in context?
So that is definitely where my thinking comes from, I guess. And in terms of my voice, I don’t know. I like to think that I am a sort of friend you’re willing to go on that questioning journey with. I have authority but I try to approach the reader like of course the reader is interested in self-examination or if of course the reader is interested in US politics and how that might affect a family in Missouri or something like that, that we are peers and that naturally everyone is living a thinking life or wants to be. And I can sort of be a help toward that. So I definitely, I try to go at it with a certain attitude toward the reader, I guess.
Marion: Yeah, it shows. It kind of feels like we’ve linked arms and you’ve said, “You want to go for a little walk and talk about this because I’m just trying to figure out how I feel about it.” And you did a lot of freelance work and I remember reading a lot of it, but a few years ago you landed the contributing columnist position at The Washington Post, and The Post says that you, quote, “Seek to distill observations of family, politics and culture into moments of clarity and insight.” And I absolutely agree. Deeply personal, but you use the small moments of life to illuminate the larger issues of the day. So let’s also then talk about eye, keeping in mind that my audience is all writers, many of whom want to do what you’ve done and do. How can you define or how do you describe or give us a sense of what catches your eye and then holds your gaze sufficiently to make a column?
Kate: Well, I guess because I am fortunate enough at this point that The Post seems to trust me, I’m kind of trusting myself, and again sort of zeroing in on something that I feel like I need to talk about or I need to figure out about my own reaction. I’ll read something and it infuriates me and so I want to drill down into what’s going on here, what is the discourse doing that I feel like is deceptive or something like that. It really does start because of the trust that The Post has in me and a certain amount of the trust that I have in myself, I guess, also. It really does start with I have feelings and either there’s a valid reason for those feelings and I’d like to figure that out or there isn’t and I’d like to battle it in myself. And that’s kind of what interests me. I guess.
I mean, my most recent column was about soup, so it’s not always a deep and heavy topic necessarily. And I guess I’ve just gotten to the point where I kind of trust that if I have an itch that I can scratch it in a way that maybe has relevance to other people too. I mean, that’s a terrible metaphor or whatever.
Marion: I think in this crazy day and age that we have these transactions out in the world, we have these transactions when we’re reading the paper, we have these transactions when we’re watching the news or listening to the woeful experience of someone else, but then we go look on our phone and start doom scrolling or we’re rushing off to something else. And so to have a considered response to things is time-consuming and that I think a lot of beginning writers forget, that there’s a time component. So extend this conversation a little bit in terms of the length of piece. When my students ask me how to determine if something is a blog post or an essay or an op-ed or a book, I use the word grit. For me to be a book a topic must reveal that if you apply some inquiry, it’s going to wear down kind of what you think and kind of reveal a lot more underneath it. But that and the absolute reality that you damn well better like the topic because you could be there for three years from idea to publication.
Kate: Or 10, yeah.
Marion: Or 10. So what’s your determination of short to long pieces? You’ve written three books, as I said, and countless shorter pieces. So what’s your word or thing or phrase or thinking about when something’s a book?
Kate: Well, my first book was The Neppi Modona Diaries, which was about a family that lived through the Holocaust in Italy. I was related to them and I got to read the journals that they kept that had not been published, and I got to translate it. It was sort of a project that was sort of, oh, here’s a project I can do that I’m the only one who has access to. And I was early twenties, I started the relationship while I was still in college and I did it right after college. So I didn’t ever think of it as potentially a small thing because I was always going to use their journals and it was always going to be kind of an investigation that dealt with each family member in turn and then myself. And now I would say with The Post, they expect an 800 word column. So probably by this point, that’s kind of how I think. I think in terms of how much can happen in 800 words.
And that’s interesting because it really varies. One thing can happen with not a lot of explanation, but a lot of voice and jokes really, frankly, or several things can happen and you’re doing a tight job of explaining a whole contextual situation and then you have your take at the end. So definitely 800 words can be loose and playful and it can also be very kind of directed and sort of informative. So in a way, because the number of words is mostly predetermined, although I’m sure you will note I had one very large piece recently, which they sort of intended for me to do a long, long piece about atheism to go with the book. But because the length is already determined, the difference for each piece is more kind of how much do I want to sort of pack in?
How much work do I want to make the reader do on this one? How much am I just in it for the fun and one memorable idea? And sometimes that just happens as I write, where it becomes clear that to do a really good job of setting the scene I’m 600 words in before I really get to put my take on it or something. You know what I mean?
Marion: Yeah, I do.
Kate: In terms of what makes a book, I mean, I guess with the most recent book, with We Of Little Faith, I did do short pieces about it and came to feel after I recognized how many different facets there were to what I wanted to talk about, that all these facets could be brought together in one book. I’m very conscious of not taking up people’s time. I’m really very conscious of that as a writer and I’m irritated with it as a reader sometimes.
Marion: Yes, me too.
Kate: I want to be entertaining, honestly. I want to be consistently entertaining. And I feel like occasionally my editor would bridle at that word and I feel like that word encompasses making jokes but also writing ideas that people haven’t thought about. So it encompasses a lot. It’s not necessarily just a frivolous thing, but I deeply feel that my job as a writer is to entertain the reader.
Marion: It’s such good advice.
Kate: So when I had my sort of pre-readers for this book, the one thing I insisted upon was if your mind is wandering, if you feel bored, if you feel like you’ve read this before, anything like that, please, please make up your own little marginal note, I’m bored now, IBN, or whatever it is, I don’t care. You’re not going to hurt my, well, you will hurt my feelings. You will definitely hurt my feelings, but I’ll be grateful for it.
Marion: Yeah, that’s very funny. That word entertain really does annoy journalism editors. It’s very interesting. I use it all the time. I always tell people don’t be afraid to entertain, and this book is very entertaining.
Kate: And I will just have to stand up for my Washington Post editor. I don’t think it bothers her at all. It was my book editor who was concerned that I’m doing a serious thing, I’m doing an important thing, and I was glad to a certain extent that he always tried to impress upon me that I was saying something that was important. But I had to push back and say, “Well, you can say important things and also write a delicious sentence.”
Marion: You can, thank goodness.
Kate: Yeah.
Marion: It is entertaining. Your new book is We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too). And as I said, it’s just out from Godine, and in it you use memoir, reporting, that voice of yours to get in our heads and on how it as you write, quote, “We won’t know the truth until we tell the truth.” This book is not only about your atheism, though it includes that, but it extends to the argument that this country in particular needs Americans who demand, as atheists do, that truth claims be tethered to fact. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. So talk to me about that moment or months or agonizing year or whatever over which that idea developed. I mean that your own evolution to atheism allowed you to reflect deeply enough to connect to our democracy and its needs to go forward.
Were you shocked, delighted, did you run up the stairs and call home? I mean, it’s a hell of an idea, but it’s also subversive or scary or profound or all those things. I mean, you mentioned before readers but did you pitch this to people or keep it quiet or as you suggested just a minute ago try it on the public with shorter pieces first? So give us a sense, because a whopping idea, and one I completely agree with now that I’ve read it. I just hadn’t thought of it before. But that moment of intuition, it can scare the crap out of a writer to have an idea like this. So was it those short pieces that allowed you to think it through or did you just think it up and go, “Oh dear, can I do this?”
Kate: No, I’ll say that when I first started to write the book, it was much more about giving non-believers the courage to be honest with themselves, to be honest with their children and their parents, just to live in a more honest way because I think a lot of people keep their non-belief to themselves because it’s just not an acceptable position in this country. There’s this general sense that we may believe in different religions but we all believe in a higher power. I mean, that’s sort of the baseline of human decency right there. So at first it was a story of how I bought that and I kept my own non-belief to myself, or let’s say, I guess the way I put it sometimes is my own belief that God was a human invention, just a literary character. I kept that to myself. I was raised reformed Jew. And I was mildly to very much deceptive at some points in my young adult life, keeping that information to myself.
And then I had a big turn when I had kids, and that was the moment that I felt like, wait a second, I hear these little creatures. I’m responsible for everything they know and I refuse to pass along to them things that I didn’t believe. That was the story I was going to tell. And then politics changed. So I mean, part of it was the rise of Christian nationalism, frankly, the transition that has happened in the last 10 years from the idea of religious liberty being something that protects everybody’s ability to worship privately in their own way to religious liberty being something that allows religions to get around public health law, to get around anti-discrimination laws, to claim exemptions from progress that we’ve made as a country.
I mean, this has all been pretty recent. And so it was really just being a person in the world and I suppose somewhat feeling a responsibility and widening my lens a little bit as a Washington Post columnist that changed my focus or convinced me that yes, there’s personal rewards for honesty, but there are political urgencies as well. I mean, frankly, it wasn’t so urgent when I started writing this many years ago, and it has become much more urgent. It wasn’t an aha moment, it was kind of piling on of the news. And I suppose once you start to see the world and politics in a certain way, those connections just became quite clear.
Marion: Well, and we’re grateful for it. And I’m really grateful for the honesty about how you started writing one book and as the world started to change you had the agility to change and think and dolly around. And you mentioned authority before so let’s dig into that a little bit. I mean, to be clear, your declaration of non-faith does not come from a place of rebellion, it comes from inquiry and honesty, and that’s what makes that previous answer so great. And while we’re reading, you provoke us to consider what responsibilities we’re shirking when we offer thoughts and prayers after school shootings, but do nothing else. What happens to human responsibility or the credit for human endeavor when we thank a divine source instead of thinking through what we say is a miracle, but maybe what human endeavor went into creating that? And these are very provocative ideas and they made me go back and locate where I got the things I really believe, which I really appreciate.
It’s almost as though you got me to say, “You know, there are some inheritances that you don’t have to say yes to.” So that’s authority. You need authority to provoke. And it’s kind of a chicken and an egg with voice, I think. How to write with authority? We talked about voice, but one begets the other, but I’m not sure in which order, because you just talked about stepping into that authority as the world changed. So what do you think authority, voice, do you have to have authority to have a voice or do you have to have a voice to have authority, or is authority like a completely evolving thing or? You mentioned authority, what do you think it is?
Kate: For me, authority comes from honesty, it comes from truth. It comes from being willing to be honest about myself, I think, you can tell me, but I think that my story of my own cowardice in certain moments or my own dishonesty in certain moments, I think if you show the reader that you are willing to be honest yourself, that goes a long way in terms of building trust. I’m not sure about authority, but in terms of building trust. And I’m a real stickler in a way that I kind of think everybody should be, but I don’t really feel like it’s true, but I’m a real stickler for if I assert something, I should be able to back that up with data. So we were having data training as columnists at The Post sometimes and I’m looking around these rooms thinking, “Doesn’t everybody do this?” And maybe they do, and it’s just one of those things that they have to sort of say that they’re doing. But I don’t know.
I remember once I wrote a piece about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and it was a fun piece. I had a blast with it. But there was a part where I said something that implied that the readership of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue was majority male, which I think was a reasonable assumption or something. I had to hunt down, well, I don’t know what it was, advertising data, whatever I could do, The Post didn’t even link to it. It’s not like the reader had to know that. But I felt like I can’t make this assertion. Who knows? Maybe women are the primary consumers of this, which if I’d found that out… it did not turn out to be true… but if I had found out that that was true, that would’ve changed what I wrote. I mean, I don’t know if readers know this about me, but that is to me, where I feel confident in speaking with authority is partly that I know myself, if I went looking for a fact, I’m not doing independent research.
In some ways I don’t think of myself as a journalist, I’m using other people’s data. I’m using other people’s facts, other people’s pieces and responding to them. But if I can’t back up what I’m saying or if I go looking for a fact to back up what I’m saying, and it turns out that it’s not true, I’m going to change what I say. It’s going to affect me. It’s going to change. I think that my willingness to learn and grow and change and think is apparent on the page maybe. And I think that is sort of paradoxically, because of course we sometimes think of authorities or experts or anything like that as people who know a certain set of facts, and that’s what they’re going to give you. And I feel like my authority maybe comes from more of my willingness to sort of learn and express the truth as I find it, and not so much as I want it to be. I don’t know. So I don’t know if that answers your question.
Marion: It does.
Kate: But that’s a little bit about my process and sort of what I find really, really important.
Marion: Well, it does answer the question, and the best example I can think of in terms of somebody mining your authority is your recent wonderful column about the very best thing on TikTok. And I agree with you that Denise, Heaven’s Receptionist, is the very best thing on that platform, which is very funny since you don’t believe in the afterlife, but you do wholeheartedly believe in Denise.
Kate: I believe in Denise.
Marion: So there is a perfect example of somebody might say, “Well, I don’t understand. I mean, she doesn’t believe in the afterlife so why is she writing about Denise, Heaven’s Receptionist? Because it allows us to see how you limb these beliefs and how you are able to utilize what millions of people have seen and taken comfort from and sent her requests for communications with people who are in heaven and you didn’t find that daunting. You found it a portal. I think that is authority. I think it’s not being dogmatic. Your voice and your authority seems to be the absence of dogma and the total presence of inquiry and delight and entertainment and information and provocation. So I’m going to put a link in the transcript to the Denise column because I read that one and I was so grateful to you because you explained why I go and seek her out every day.
Kate: Yeah, exactly. And to go back to what we were talking about before, I wrote that because I loved it, and I just was like, “Why do I love this so much?” I mean, her talent, it’s Taryn Delanie Smith, I think is her name, her talents are obvious, but there is something curious about why I love so much this thing about heaven. So yes, I think maybe my authority comes in a way because yeah, you can trust me not to dig my heels in. You can trust me not to dig my heels in. And I think that especially these days when we’re looking at certain authority figures that we are accustomed to, the typical sort of white male boomer who is now feeling shoved to the side or something.
I mean, I think the ones who aren’t being shoved to the side are the ones who are willing to think new thoughts and move and bend and respond to things that have changed in the world. And so I think, I don’t know if there’s a gender element that’s been created over the years but I do think there is something about a certain kind of authority that has a more female tinge to me.
Marion: Well, we’re getting a lot more diversity in the voice, and I think that’s really important, and we’re getting a lot more experience with diverse voices. So I think that, again, if I could point to the best way I can show your authority, it’s the Denise column. It’s a walloping one. I just loved it. Of course, we have to discuss negative feedback. I mean the haters, you have to expect them in this instant access time. And a lot of my writers that I work with say, “Oh, I don’t want to put my stuff out there because it just takes one comment and it just sends me reeling.” So talk about haters if you would please.
Kate: Well, first of all, I do not read the comments on my columns. I made that rule and I stick with it. My husband reads them, my agent reads them sometimes, and sometimes they’ll try to tell me things and I’m like, “You know what? I really, really, really, really don’t want to know.” So that takes care of a lot. The people who write to me, who find me, tend to be, I mean, 95% is positive. I get some people who offer to pray for me or are worried for my soul, but that’s fine. I was raised Jewish so I’m used to that. And so yeah, I really haven’t dealt with that as much as you would think for somebody who’s out there saying people who don’t believe in God should be honest about it, who’s out there about the fact that she thinks that God is a human invention. I don’t really get that much. I mean, partly I’m not on social media enough probably.
I remember there was one feminism thing I wrote about that I was critiqued, not from the left exactly, but it was from the African American perspective on something that I’d written about name changes, which I was interested in. And I was sort of upset that it was on Twitter and it was in this kind of context where there was no way to have a conversation. I wanted that perspective. I wanted to learn from that perspective, but that wasn’t the right platform for that. Just so the way it works, it’s like people start to pile on and then even if you respond to the original issue, it doesn’t do anything.
I don’t know. I have felt like part of my whole objective with this book and with a lot of my columns, and they’re not all about this topic, but is to show that you can be forthcoming about these things and honest about these things, and really nothing terrible comes from it. So I guess I’m not super helpful on this. I think when you can not look, don’t look, it’s fine. The fact is your writing is going to reach people who need it, who love it, who take something from it, and is it going to reach some people who either don’t care or are upset by it? I guess. But I think that also shows that you’re being read.
Marion: That’s it. I don’t read any of the reviews on Amazon, so I think it’s a pretty good rule. So as we have to wrap this up unfortunately, I think you of all people that I’ve interviewed are the best person to ask this question.
Kate: Oh gosh.
Marion: No pressure.
Kate: Okay, no, no, I don’t feel that at all.
Marion: But can you have a writing career from a value driven life? In other words, can you avoid the freelance pieces that have no interest to you and instead develop a core set of beliefs and make a living writing from there?
Kate: I think that you can. I will say that I probably don’t at this point if I sort of counted out what I sort of make from The Post and other kind of writing jobs where I’m just writing the things that I care about. I don’t think I make a living in a way that would count for a lot of my peers. I still do work. I work for an architect. I work for a music school. I still do writing work for pay. But I know certainly people, I mean, you had Virginia Sole-Smith on, man she hustles, and I know people who seem to make it work. I think I would rather do, in terms of writing opinion and stuff like that, I’m not ever going to put an opinion piece out there that I’m not proud of that doesn’t reflect my values or my standards. I would rather write newsletters and web content and stuff like that to pay the bills, I guess. So that is my answer. I haven’t gotten to the point where I feel like I’m exactly earning enough as this kind of writer.
Marion: Well, I think then the flip side is true, you’ve got to earn the right to write. And I always warn people when they say, “Oh, I’m going to quit my job.” And I say, “No, don’t do that. You’ve got to make the money so you can get your voice out into the world, that voice of yours out into the world.” And that means writing for an architecture firm. That means writing for a music school. That means because this is what you want to publish and so you’ve got to earn the money to have the right to do that. So I think it’s really just another side of the same coin is what I guess we’re getting at.
Kate: I don’t want to scare people too much. I mean, I feel like… in a way I really started late. I mean, you mentioned my two other books, those were like a lifetime ago. And by lifetime ago I mean a 23-year-old child’s lifetime ago. So I had those two books out and I did some freelance work then. And then really while I was raising… I had three kids and the youngest is now 18… and really while I was raising them I wasn’t trying to have full-time opinion creating literary work. I was doing copy editing, I was doing other things. In a way, I feel like my career has just begun. So maybe I’ll get to that point where that’s the only thing I’m doing with my time.
Marion: Well, we look forward to whatever it is you choose to do next.
Kate: Oh, thank you.
Marion: Thank you so much, Kate. I love this book and I think that it is a must read for everybody. So thank you for coming along today. I’m deeply grateful and I look forward to having you back when you’ve got something else out. So thanks a million.
Kate: Sounds good to me.
Marion: All right. The writer is Kate Cohen. Follow her columns at The Washington Post and see more on her at kate cohen dot net. The book is, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (and Maybe You Should Too). Just out from Godine. I’m Marion Roach Smith and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at overit studios dot com. Our producer is Jaquelin Mignot. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit marion roach dot com, the home of The Memoir Project, where writers get their needs met through online classes and how to write memoir. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to follow QWERTY wherever you get your podcasts and listen to it wherever you go. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a review. It helps others to find their way to their writing lives.
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