Kevin P. Keating: Fiction, Essays & Commentary

An Essay in Cleveland Magazine : " Our minds, for better or worse, have adapted (one can plausibly argue   evolved ) to cope with the innumerable challenges presented by a human rather than a natural environment. Our restless brains are hard-wired to help us navigate not only crowded city streets and congested interstate highways but also the labyrinth of complex   interpersonal relationships.  It’s a world fraught with social pressures of every kind, made that much worse by online media with its armies of trolls and ideologically possessed Twitter mobs."  READ ESSAY HERE

An Essay in Assignment Magazine : " Any artist who is honest about the source of inspiration must contend with the power of the void, the abyss, the darkness, the thing that obeys no authority, the thing (which is no thing ) that devours and destroys predictable patterns of behavior and pathological systems of thought. This is not to say the abyss is without its dangers. The adverse effects of this self-dissolution and terrifying emptiness include neuroticism, depression, suicidal impulses, insomnia, nightmares, anxiety, psychosis, dysphoria, even alien abductions. And can you think of a single artist who hasn’t experienced at least some (or in the unusual case of Philip K. Dick all ) of these symptom s?" READ THE ESSAY HERE

Cleveland-area novelist Kevin P. Keating  is the 2018 John E. Nance Writer-in-Residence. Keating will reside for four weeks at the historic home of author, humorist, and   New Yorker   cartoonist James Thurber and receive a $5,000 stipend. He will begin his residency in late summer of 2018. Keating is the author of many short stories, essays, and reviews, and two novels:  The Natural Order of Things  (2014), which was a finalist for the  Los Angeles Times  Book Prize for a first work of fiction, and  The Captive Condition  (2015). Keating is nearing completion of his third novel, tentatively titled  In the Secret Parts of Fortune . He will be working on final edits of this project and drafting his fourth novel during his residency. READ MORE HERE