Interview with Karin Patton: 2025 Q3 Essay Contest Runner Up

Karin’s Bio: Karin is a long-time West Virginia newspaper columnist who lives with her husband Don in a 120-year-old warehouse they are attempting to renovate, despite it being far beyond their skill set. When not covered in remodeling filth, she enjoys refinishing antiques that are one gasp away from the dumpster. Her day job involves managing a recycling center and re-use store in an area rife with old hippies and young back-to-the-landers. Her newspaper columns were once named Best in the U.S. by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, a bittersweet win considering the stories were about the diagnosis and passing of her youngest daughter from Spinal Muscular Atrophy. She is currently working on a young adult novel about a girl who grows a tail. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Ladies' Home Journal, Writer’s Digest, Family Circle, Woman's World, and Atlanta Parent, among others. 

If you haven't done so already, check out Karin's award-winning essay "Pinned Hopes" and then return here for a chat with the author. 

WOW: Congratulations on placing in the Q3 2025 Essay Contest! How did you begin writing your essay and how did it and your writing processes evolve as you wrote? 

Karin: Years ago, while lying in a hospital bed after receiving heartbreaking news, I spotted a mostly deflated balloon hanging from a tack in the ceiling. I tried to distract myself from what was happening by imagining the scenarios for how that balloon came to be hanging there. The balloon was such a powerful image to me that I knew I would someday write about it, although it took years before I could. 

WOW: It’s so interesting to learn how a simple image or memory can be turned into a powerful piece of art. What did you learn about yourself or your writing by creating this essay? 

Karin: For much of my adult life, I have dealt with sadnesses by distracting myself. It’s become something of a superpower. Still, it wasn’t until writing this story that I realized where the distracting business might have begun. 

WOW: That’s a powerful realization. What connections, if any, do you see between your writing and your interests in remodeling, refinishing, and recycling? 

Karin: I don’t like anything to be wasted, including experiences. With both writing and refinishing, I’m not always wise enough to recognize the value of what I have until I can strip off the layers. The process of writing allows me to slow down what I have gone through and examine it in a way that isn’t possible as something is happening. I can spend time determining what is worth keeping and what can get tossed. What I start with and what I have at the end is often so different it’s nearly unrecognizable. 

WOW: Quite an apt metaphor for the writing process. Which creative nonfiction essays or writers have inspired you most, and in what ways did they inspire you? 

Karin: The writings of David Sedaris inspire me greatly. His beginnings and endings are exceptional. He will begin by causing a belly laugh and then get into something serious or tragic and then step back out again and cause another hard laugh. He can seem to be veering off subject, yet those offshoots always make his stories even meatier. I don’t know how he does it. I can’t think of any other writer as masterful as him. 

WOW: If you could tell your younger self anything about writing, what would it be? 

Karin: I used to believe I was being responsible when I put my writing on the back burner so I could work a second job or refinish a bunch of furniture or some other moneymaking endeavor. I wish I could tell my younger self to prioritize writing since that is where I find peace and a sense of pride and—please excuse the cliché—the things that money can’t buy. 

WOW: Excellent advice! Anything else you’d like to add? 

Karin: The story that placed first in this contest—"You" by Elizabeth Hoban—that is a must read. Perfectly told. Every word was exactly right. 

WOW: Thank you for the shoutout to fellow 2025 Q3 Essay Contest winner! And thank you for sharing your writing with us and for your thoughtful responses. Happy writing! 

Interviewed by Anne Greenawalt, founder and editor-in-chief of Sport Stories Press, which publishes sports books by, for, and about sportswomen and amateur athletes. Engage on Twitter or Instagram @GreenMachine459.

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