Though YA slice-of-life novel Diary of a Confused Feminist was former stand-up comedian and U.K. author Kate Weston’s U.K. debut, it’s her second book to appear in the U.S. following the YA murder mystery Murder on a School Night. In Diary of a Confused Feminist, which is told via diary entries, 15-year-old Kat Evans struggles to balance her desire to be an “excellent feminist”; classic adolescent worries surrounding bullying, crushes, friendship, and menstruation; and mental health challenges related to anxiety, compulsive behaviors, and depression. In a conversation with PW, Weston talked about her relationship with feminism, how her comedy and her writing helped her process teenage trauma, and the differences between writing for teens and adults.
Why did you decide to format Kat’s story as diary entries as opposed to straight prose?
I just think it felt more personal that way. When I tried to write it using straight prose, I felt like it was missing something. It was missing the feeling of Kat talking directly to the reader. The diary entries give it a closeness that I didn’t get from standard prose; Kat doesn’t feel so distant from the audience that way.
What initially drew you to contemporary fiction and what has since inspired you to focus more thriller-based genre fiction?
I wrote Kat’s story in 2018/2019, so quite a while ago. It was the first book I had ever written. I had been struggling with my mental health at the time and I wasn’t doing as much stand-up, so I was really focusing on preserving my own wellbeing. The whole reason I wanted to write Diary of a Confused Feminist in the first place was because I had been attending therapy and I realized that a lot of the stuff that I was working through started when I was a teenager. So, a lot of what Kat goes through in the book—anxiety and depression and intrusive thoughts and compulsions—were things that I was dealing with when I was younger. I thought, “Wouldn’t it have been great if there was a book when I was that age where the protagonist was dealing with the same things?”
Weirdly enough, when Diary of a Confused Feminist came out in the U.K., a lot of people I had gone to school with got in touch with me, and they were like, “If I’d known you were dealing with this, I would have spoken to you because I was also dealing with something similar.” But because none of us knew that we were going through these things, we didn’t want to tell each other. I think that speaks to why I wanted to do this book, why I wanted to get that stuff out there and talk about mental health a bit more. That was really my focus when I started writing; Diary of a Confused Feminist was like a letter to myself when I was a teenager, to tell her that it’s all right, that she’s not the only one and that she’s not on her own.
There was a fair bit of resistance when I started promoting the book in the U.K., particularly from men. Diary of a Confused Feminist is quite period positive, and with how open I was with talking about menstruation, I got called disgusting on the internet a lot. When I would go around to schools to talk about the book, I had a couple of male teachers say, “What you’re talking about is really embarrassing, so don’t expect too much out of these kids.” And I was like, “It’s not embarrassing. It’s just another bodily function.”
As for how I went from Diary of a Confused Feminist to a murder mystery, well—I’ve always loved murder mysteries. So, when the pandemic happened, I kind of doubled down on talking about menstruation, and I had this idea about periods being the catalyst of a book, and that’s how Murder on a School Night came to be.
What is your relationship to feminism and how did it inform your approach to Kat’s story?
I played guitar and I was really good at it; I ended up getting a degree in classical guitar. But the whole time I was working toward my degree, I was always aware that I was in a very male-orientated space. It felt like quite a fight to break through that atmosphere sometimes. On more than one occasion, I was told I was too emotional to be doing what I was doing.
It was the same with stand-up comedy, because that’s also quite a male-dominated space. I was often told to not talk about my period or my vagina on stage, but men in the same space were allowed to talk about their penises and wanking [masturbation]. People would laugh and joke about that, but if a woman talked about something similar, there was always this kind of judgment. I think those two experiences really informed my relationship to feminism.
There was also a period in my mid-20s when I was working in a bookshop. It was around when the third wave of feminism was coming to fruition, and there were a lot of older women coming into the store that time who were telling me that I didn’t understand feminism properly because I didn’t know all the theory that they knew. There was a lot of judgment and speculation about whether younger women could be proper feminists. Obviously, we have a long way to go, but things are much better nowadays because feminism is so much more intersectional, and you don’t have to have all this strict theoretical knowledge to be able to call yourself a feminist. But at that time, I found it quite disheartening to be told by older women that I couldn’t be a proper feminist. I think that informed a lot of Diary of a Confused Feminist, because the book is about feminism that’s more inclusive than the kind that I was brought up on.
Do you feel that there’s a disparity between the reception of your books in the U.K. vs. the U.S.?
It’s quite interesting. My personal feeling on reviews is that they’re for the readers, so I tend to stay away from things like Goodreads. But when it comes to press, and people tagging me in things on social media, it’s been quite funny to see the reception to my books overall.
I haven’t really seen as many U.S. reviews for Diary of a Confused Feminist yet, especially because the U.S. still doesn’t know that much about it—at least, not as much as my U.K. readers do. U.S. readers’ first perception of my writing was Murder on a School Night whereas Diary of a Confused Feminist was my U.K. debut, and readers there were like, “I loved this book, and I can’t wait for your new one.” And then they pick up Murder on a School Night and they’re like, “Wait, what? This is different.” But a lot of people who tagged me in reviews were like, “It’s still the same kind of lovable, fun characters. It’s just that they’re solving a murder.” And people still enjoy the humor. So that was comforting and nice.
Did you encounter any specific challenges pivoting from writing YA to your upcoming adult novel, You May Now Kill the Bride?
Because I was quite used to writing for younger people, there were points of writing You May Now Kill the Bride where I’d have to catch myself and be like, “That tone’s maybe a bit younger than you were going for.” So that was a bit of a challenge. But also, I think that a lot of the thoughts that we have as people can be read as young, you know, especially when it comes to friendships, because when someone annoys you or makes you a bit cross, that petty voice in the back of your mind sounds maybe a bit younger than people would like to admit.
Overall, I feel like the whole process has been super fun, but also, it’s not as different as people might think it is. I’m quite lucky in that Diary of a Confused Feminist, Murder on a School Night, and You May Now Kill the Bride lend to each other so well. My adult book is very much about friendship—friendships between women and politics between women and the things that can happen in long-standing female friendships, as well as a comedy murder mystery. It’s almost wild to me how some of the themes I would deal with in a YA book translate to You May Now Kill the Bride; I just approach it in a slightly more savage way.
Diary of a Confused Feminist by Kate Weston. Simon & Schuster, $21.99 Jan. 2 ISBN 978-1-6659-3794-8; $12.99 paper ISBN 978-1-6659-3793-1
