Author Kim Fairley On The Main Empowering Messages She Wants Readers To Take From Her Writing

You may never feel your work is finished I’ve made changes to my manuscripts every time I’ve reread them. At some point, I’ve just said, this is enough. Time to move on to the next story.

As part of my interview series on the five things you need to know to become a great author, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kim Fairley.

She is a Michigan writer and the author of “Shooting Out the Lights: A Memoir” which will be out on July 27th. She also is the author of “Boreal Ties: Photographs and Two Diaries of the 1901 Peary Relief Expedition” about her great grandfather’s trip to the Arctic.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you share a story about what brought you to this particular career path?

Well, at thirteen I became my family’s genealogist. My mother was from one of those New England families that came over on the Mayflower. Her grandfather had been to the Arctic in 1901 and my great aunt had shown me her father’s collection of Arctic photographs. As soon as I heard about the controversy over who made it to the North Pole first — Cook or Peary — I was hooked. So, when I did my MFA…