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Kayla Rae Whitaker biography

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Kayla Rae Whitaker

Kayla Rae Whitaker

Kayla Rae Whitaker Biography

Kayla Rae Whitaker was born and raised in Kentucky. She is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and of New York University's MFA program, which she attended as a Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholar. After many years of living in Brooklyn, she returned to Kentucky, her home state, in 2016 with her husband and their geriatric tomcat, Breece D'J Pancake.

Kayla Rae Whitaker's website

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Interview

Debut author Kayla Rae Whitaker talks about The Animators, artistic ambition, and why she is moving back to her native Kentucky after seven years.

Describe The Animators to us.

The Animators is about Sharon Kisses and her business partner and friend, Mel Vaught, two brilliant cartoonists who meet in college and begin working together. Despite their differences – Mel is a wildly charismatic, drug-dabbling, party-starter, Sharon, a shy, wry, lovelorn misanthrope - the Vaught and Kisses partnership is a profoundly productive and creative one (their style: think a more feminist Fritz the Cat, with an Adult Swim sensibility) . . . until the breakout success of their first full-length animated film. The publicity tour sends Mel and Sharon on a road trip back to their childhood homes in rural Florida and Kentucky, setting off a year that is the most difficult of their collective lives: as Mel's substance abuse reaches combustion levels, Sharon suffers a medical crisis, leaving Mel, who barely knows how to pay a bill, to care for both their business and Sharon. Can Vaught and Kisses survive in the face of an uncertain future?

The Animators asks what happens when, after years of striving, ambition finally starts to pay off. It's about being a woman artist. It's about friendship, partnership, and how the baggage we carry with us contours those relationships.

In ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Kayla Rae Whitaker at BookBrowse
The Animators jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Kayla Rae Whitaker but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Michael Chabon

    Michael Chabon

    Novelist, screenwriter, columnist and short story writer Michael Chabon was born May 24, 1963 in Washington, DC.   He grew up in the suburbs of Columbia, Maryland with his parents Robert, a physician, lawyer, ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Animators

    Try:
    The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
    by Michael Chabon

  • Sarah Gerard

    Sarah Gerard

    Sarah Gerard is the author of the novel Binary Star, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, Paris Review Daily, ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Animators

    Try:
    Sunshine State
    by Sarah Gerard

We recommend 9 similar authors

View all 9 Read-Alikes

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