Kate Braverman at City Lights, photo by John Kingston

Kate Braverman (February 5, 1949 – October 12, 2019) was a poet and experimental writer of a singular and ruthless breed. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she moved to Los Angeles in 1958 with her family. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley (1971) and earned a M.A in English from Sonoma State University (1986).

Her literary career spanned decades, beginning with the poetry collection Milk Run (1977). She gained acclaim with her debut novel, Lithium for Medea (1979). Other novels include Palm Latitudes (1988), Wonders of the West (1993), and The Incantation of Frida K (2001). Her notable short story collections include Squandering the Blue (1990), Small Craft Warnings (1998), and her final work, A Good Day for Seppuku (2018).

Braverman's accomplishments were recognized with multiple honors, including winning the O. Henry Prize and the Raymond Carver Editor's Choice Award. Her short fiction was selected for the Best American Short Stories anthology on multiple occasions. She was also the first recipient of the Graywolf Press Creative Nonfiction Award for her memoir, Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles: An Accidental Memoir (2006).

"The power and intensity you don’t see much outside of rock and roll." — Rolling Stone

"Braverman possesses a magical, incantatory voice and the ability to loft ordinary lives into the heightened world of myth, and in using these gifts . . . she has succeeded in creating a work of hallucinatory, poetic power."—The New York Times

Reprint Coming in 2026...

Squandering the Blue back in print from Penguin Random House.

The debut story collection from Los Angeles writer Kate Braverman assembles a vivid patchwork of interconnected narratives set in Southern California. Through brief, often haunting snapshots of women’s lives, Braverman presents portraits of individuals and communities entangled in cycles of longing and substance dependency—with affection and addiction often being destructively braided together.

“Falling in October” is a spoof of the art communities as well as a feminist post-nuclear story; in “Points of Decision,” a troubled woman tries to free herself of an abusive relationship; and in the highly-anthologized “Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta,” a recovering alcoholic navigates the challenges of motherhood and new sobriety while developing a risky relationship with an enigmatic stranger.

Squandering the Blue sees Braverman explore an underlying concern with articulation—how individuals interpret, label, or suppress experience while caught in the shadow of the potential for a better life.

"“If, as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it stands to reason that horror, too, lurks deep within the optic nerve. How else to explain the lushly menacing imagery in the poet and novelist Kate Braverman’s latest book?” –The New York Times

"That Braverman is gifted, even prodigiously so, there is no doubt . . . her fiction is distinguished by the purity of language and boldness of imagery that seem to be the private stock of poets." — The Los Angeles Times

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