By Watkins Mill High School Seniors Obehi Eromosele and Huswat Olajide
Most people dread seeing their teachers outside of school, but one Watkins Mill High School alumna is looking forward to it this weekend. WMHS graduate Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer will speak as a featured poetry author and in the following block WMHS english and journalism teacher Sara Goodman Confino will be one of the featured authors at the Gaithersburg Book Festival for the second time. Confino will be engaging in a discussion about her book, Don’t Forget to Write, with Sophie Wan, the author of Women of Good Fortune.
This year, the 15th annual Gaithersburg Book Festival returns to Bohrer Park on Saturday, May 18, from 10am to 6pm. The festival features over 125 authors and is free to attend.
“Kathryn was always a gifted writer and an absolute delight as a student. I remember she was reading the Game of Thronesbooks–her classmates had watched the show, but the books had so much more material, so she’d come in at lunch and we would discuss,” Confino said. Confino taught Bratt-Pfotenhauer for a year, building that writer’s connection.
Confino is the author of three bestselling novels: For the Love of Friends, She’s Up to No Good, and Don’t Forget to Write. Don’t Forget to Write reached #2 in the US Kindle store at release. Don’t Forget to Write is the story of 20-year-old Marilyn Kleinman, who in 1960 embarrasses her family when she gets caught making out with the rabbi’s son during Shabbat services (everyone catches them–they come crashing through a piece of stained glass). Her parents want her to marry the boy so they can save face, but she refuses. So they send her off to her matchmaker great aunt in Philadelphia, who turns out to NOT be what Marilyn expected at all. She spends the summer learning what freedom can actually look like and that there are a lot more avenues open to her than she thought.
Her upcoming novel, Behind Every Good Man, will be released on August 6 from Lake Union Publishing. Set in 1962, Beverly Diamond seems like she has the perfect life–that is, until she catches her husband, who is the campaign manager for a senator seeking reelection, cheating with his secretary. Beverly throws him out, and when her husband threatens to sell the house, she gets a job–working for the opposing candidate. It’s an empowering story of feminism, family, and strong women who refuse to settle, told with humor and heart. It’s set primarily in and around Montgomery County with lots of fun throwbacks to county staples that are long gone, like Montgomery Donuts, the Colonial Manor Motel, and Hofberg’s delicatessen, as well as plenty of locations current residents will recognize.
“I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember–in fact, in my baby book, there’s a handwritten paper called, “Sara’s first story.” Apparently, I told my grandfather a story about a duckand he wrote it down,” Confino said.
She credits her aunt and uncle, longtime Montgomery County residents Dolly and Marvin Band, for the primary research for Don’t Forget to Write and Behind Every Good Man. “My uncle is 91, and he remembers EVERYTHING.”
Confino will be taking leave from teaching next year to try to make writing full-time work. “Between teaching, writing, and being a mom to two little boys, it’s a lot right now,” Confino said. “I’ll miss the kids–my students have been my biggest cheerleaders as my writing career has grown and I’ve loved being able to share my progress with them. But if one of them asked me if they should follow their dream, my answer would be an unequivocal, ‘Have a safety net, but definitely do what you love,’ so I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t do the same thing.”
Author Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer is a poet and writer from Gaithersburg, Maryland, who graduated from Bryn MawrCollege in 2020 with a degree in Russian language and literature and an MFA in creative writing (specifically in poetry) from Syracuse University. She will start a doctoral comparative literature program at NYU in the fall, focusing on the Soviet avant garde.
“I’ve been writing poetry since the third grade but didn’t seriously pursue it until my journalism and English classes in high school with Ms. Confino and [then English teacher, now WMHS assistant principal Veena]. Roberson, respectively,” Bratt-Pfotenhauer said. “Ms. Confino and Ms. Roberson inspired me in different ways: Ms. Confino showed me how you needed to put in the work and be persistent in pursuing a writing career, and Ms. Roberson introduced me to Sylvia Plath. How could you not be a writer after that?”
Bratt-Pfotenhauer will be discussing her first poetry collection, Bad Animal. “I like to tell people that Bad Animal fell out of me, kind of like a baby elephant, all legs and no hope, because the actual writing process was fast, once I knew the subjects I was writing towards:
The book dwells on the desire in the aftermath of sexual trauma, the natural world, and loss of innocence and faith in the world generally speaking. “As you might imagine, it’s a very happy book! But it was honest. I believe poetry is an inherent act of public vulnerability, so you can’t really avoid the personal all that much, but I always appreciate a poem that’s substantial, and is closer to an emotional truth rather than a factual truth,” she said. “Bad Animal was born out of a desire to process my personal trauma in a way that wasn’t trying to hide behind a metaphor.”
Bratt-Pfotenhauer went into her MFA program with a manuscript she thought would be her first book. However, it wasn’t. But she said it was a good exercise in assembling a book realizing the Bad Animal poems were stringing together in a cohesive way. She was able to finish the project within a matter of months, with the help of a pact she made with a friend to complete their manuscripts over the summer. She submitted the book to a number of contests and open reading periods for small press publishers, and a week later, Courtney LeBlanc, Editor-in-Chief of Riot in Your Throat took it for publication.
For me, there’s no separating my writing from my daily life—one is a reflection of the other,” Bratt-Pfotenhauer said. “I use writing to process life, and I mine life for content.”
“The Gaithersburg Book Festival was always my favorite place to go in MoCo, and being asked to be a featured author was surreal to say the least,” Bratt-Pfotenhauer added. “I can’t wait to connect with other poets and writers across genres. Writing at the end of the day is never a solitary endeavor, it’s always a collaboration with those writing before and around you, and I always become inspired at these events to write more, to improve my craft and explore more subject matter.”
Bratt-Pfotenhauer will be speaking in the Edgar Allen Poe Pavillion at 11:15 with a signing immediately following. Confino will be speaking in the F. Scott Fitzgerald Pavillion at 12:15 with a signing immediately following. Books from all featured authors will be available on site from Politics and Prose. Visit http://www.gaithersburgbookfestival.org for more information. The event is held rain or shine.