Katie Runde

Writing Accountability, Coaching, and Manuscript Services

 

About me: I am the author of The Shore (Scribner 2022), a NYTimes and Amazon editors’ and Indie Next pick, and a Barnes & Noble Discover monthly pick. I grew up on the Jersey Shore, where my family ran boardwalk businesses, and have ten years of teaching experience and earned my MFA from Warren WIlson College. I have taught workshops at Porchlight Literary and lectured at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and I am proud to live in the literary community of Iowa City, where I have mentored beginning writers, welcomed and hosted visiting writers to local bookstores for their book tours, and raised my two daughters. 

 

My approach: I work with writers of all levels, and have worked with absolute beginners brand new to the blank page and with New York Times bestselling authors to provide feedback on drafts, accountability, and manuscript reads. 

 

I love working with writers at every stage and it’s so meaningful to me to help new writers clear that hurdle of establishing a practice and gaining confidence, and to provide high-level feedback to more established writers to refine their projects with a fresh eye, humor, and generative energy. 

 

I am open to many genres,and think I work best with literary and commercial fiction, short story writers, and personal memoirists.  I have a special interest in family stories, coming-of-age stories, love stories, and in writers who have taken a break and are looking for a way back into a practice.

 

In my manuscript reads, I consider it my job to amp up what is working, to identify where early drafts can be refined, expanded, or condensed, to move manuscripts to the next level with authentic and generative feedback. 

 

As a coach, I believe in practice and progress, habits and a holistic approach, with room for real life. My own life  and writing practice has been changed by accountability, and I feel privileged to be part of a writer’s life who they might share progress and report back to, who understands roadblocks and realigning as much as metrics. The former “gold-star” students with stories to tell work best with structure, and as a recovering gold star student I know this all too well.

 

Finally, I find the most meaning in my own work when I write about hard things. If you are someone who wants to spend time on the page to work through loss, grief, complicated feelings, or anything life might be throwing at your, for yourself or to share with others, I know from experience how writing can make sense of even the most bewildering and difficult eras of our lives and would love to work side by side with you through this.