Kathryn Vercillo - Interview series vol. 15 | #108
On her virtual book tour, collaborating with other writers and more
Hello, this is Celeste. I have been writing poems since 2017 and a low-fantasy crime novel since 2022. Letters for Creatives is the place where I share my thoughts on creativity, resources for creatives, and interview creators and authors.
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Kathryn Vercillo is a San Francisco author and artist, exploring the complex relationship between art and mental health. She celebrates art as therapy. She also looks at the shadow side—how art hinders or harms mental health and how mental health symptoms influence the creative process, in terms of content, medium, productivity, identity and business.
She comes to this work through lived experience, an academic background (MA in Psychological Studies, currently in a MA in Visual and Critical Studies), artist interviews, and research into art and mental health history.
Kathryn has written ten books including The Artist’s Mind: The Creative Lives and Mental Health of Famous Artists and Crochet Saved My Life: The Mental and Physical Health Benefits of Crochet.
She has also written extensively for both print and online publications, curated collaborative art projects to raise awareness about depression/suicide, and writes a subscription-based newsletter called Create Me Free where she interviews artists to learn how art and mental health intersect in varied ways.
When she is not immersed in these passions, she is usually found snuggling with her large rescue dogs.
Tell us a bit about you. Where can we find your work?
I dropped out of high school, dropped out of college more than once, dropped out of law school. I believe it is okay to quit things when they aren’t right for you in order to make space for the things that are your right path.
The best place to find my work right now is Create Me Free newsletter and Instagram.
How has understanding and writing about the topic helps you to get better at dealing with bad days?
I believe that we all have our own mental health spectrum, that range of our experience from the really hard days to the easy ones.
I used to really beat myself up on the bad days which just made things worse. A day when I couldn’t get out of bed became “you are never going to be successful, what do you think you are doing as a writer, blah blah blah.”
The more I have learned about others’ experiences, the more I have come to be gentle with my understanding of my own. This has allowed me to distinguish what types of things make the hard days harder or easier so that I can adapt better and reduce the pain of bad days.
It has also allowed me to better understand my own patterns, knowing that even if it is a bad day, it doesn’t mean that it will always feel so bad.
Realizing the ways that mental health symptoms can negatively impact my creativity allows me to make space for there to just be bad days. And on the flip side, I have learned the ways that creativity improves my mental health. When writing isn’t helping for example, I switch to crochet or collage to express myself and shift my mood.
You have done a virtual book tour for your book The Artist’s Mind: The Creative Lives and Mental Health of Famous Artists in August. Why did you decide to do a virtual book tour?
I am not sure that I even thought twice about it. I have been writing books and promoting them online for over a decade and I have often done virtual book tours so it just seemed natural.
I was just beginning to get active on Substack and loving the community here so that is why I chose the platform. It was a terrific experience that gave me the chance to connect with some amazing people.
I definitely recommend others do the same when they are releasing anything - a book, a course, whatever it may be. I offer a free guide showing how I did mine.
How did you choose the place you go on tour?
I reached out to some of the people that I most wanted to connect with. I put a call out through Notes and as an announcement in some of my writing there as well.
I accepted pretty much anyone who was interested and didn’t actually look at any of those numbers. I operate on the belief that it is my job to create the work and send it out into the world and that the rest is all up to chance or destiny or whatever you want to call it.
You never know who will read something you have written at the exact time that they need to read it, so even if a writer only has one subscriber, who am I to say that is not who needs it? I approach almost all collaboration in this way.
Have you worried about echo chamber if you only do it on Substack?
I wasn’t worried about it for this tour because I was excited to be building my community here. However, I do think that this is a real concern in terms of any goals around monetizing Substack. I am really struggling with this right now - trying to figure out how best to inspire people to choose a paid subscription. I offer Sliding Scale payment method and have tried various things. But ultimately I keep coming up against people saying something along the lines of “I already pay for more Substack subscriptions than I could afford.” So, if everyone on Substack is trying to get paid readers then the number of us actually getting paid seems limited. In that way, I think it is going to be important to come off of the platform and get readers from elsewhere and I am not honestly sure what that looks like for me right now.
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Can you tell us who influence your work the most recently?
Currently, it is Substack women writers who are sharing their authentic truths about the complexities of creativity and being human. Rachel Katz, Lisa Olivera, Priya Iyer, Wendi Gordon, Hetty Cate de Cossy, Kimberly Werner - just to name a few.
Every Friday I do a digest rounding up the amazing things I am reading. I am trying to engage more deeply through elaboration and drawing connections and it really influences my work in significant ways.
I have been re-reading some of my favorite writers on writing, including Gretchen Rubin, SARK, Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg, Rebecca Solnit.
What was the best thing that have happened to you after you have done the tour?
It is truly just the connections and friendships I have made on Substack as a result of working together in this way. There are so many inspiring people here.
Perhaps one of my favorite examples of continuing to work together is through my connection with illustrator Sue Clancy. We met because she joined the virtual book tour. Then I had a chance to interview her about her work that really touched me and others.
Later I had this idea to launch visual interviews, in which people can respond in original images instead of in words (particularly for neurodiverse individuals and those for whom trauma makes words hard but open to anyone) and I asked her if she would be willing to test it out for me. She gave a great response and visual interviews are really taking off on my page which has been a big delight for me.
Has the virtual book tour helps you to spread the words about the idea?
The full interview and this week’s creative challenge would be available for paying members. You would get full access to the archive, interview series with exclusive creative challenges, resources, book recommendations, etc.
You can now get the membership for $6 a month, which means $1.33 per week. Or you can get the annual membership for $48, which is only $0.9 per week.
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