AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: Celine Keating

Céline Keating is an award-winning writer and author of Layla (2011), a Huffington Post featured title, and Play for Me (2015), a finalist in the International Book Awards, the Indie Excellence Awards, and the USA Book Awards.Her newest novel, The Stark Beauty of Last Things was released on October 24, 2023. Céline's short fiction and articles have been published in many literary journals and magazines. For many years a part-time resident of New York City and Montauk, NY, now of Bristol, Rhode Island, Céline continues to serve on the board of environmental organization Concerned Citizens of Montauk. She is the coeditor of the anthology On Montauk: A Literary Celebration. 

Q: What inspired you to write The Stark Beauty of Last Things?
Answer: When I discovered Montauk, Long Island, I was immediately captivated: It was wild and sparsely populated and absolutely perfect. Over time, when the area began to get overdeveloped, I grew anxious about its future. The consequences of climate change were becoming apparent, too. So my novel grew out of my passion for Montauk’s natural beauty and my fear of changes that would spoil its specialness. I also wanted to convey a sense of urgency that we need to act now: Once a landscape is lost it is lost forever.

Q: How did you create your cast of characters?
Answer: Each of the female characters is wholly invented but based collectively on women I encountered, whether the tough women who worked in the fishing industry to those who worked seasonally in the bars and restaurants to those who owned small shops or motels. I also drew heavily on my experience with the environmental community. The only main character in the novel who is not local to the area – and the only male – was invented out of whole cloth. Ironically the storyline only gelled once I had him, an outsider, to help frame the story.

Q: How was the novel's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
Answer: I wanted my title to convey a sense of the beauty of nature and what’s lost when we as human beings lose our connection to the natural world. The phrase was written by the poet Edward Hirsh to mean that beauty can be present even in death. The words struck me as perfectly capturing the elegiac mood I intended, and the idea that we often don’t appreciate something until it is gone.

Q: How important is setting to you in your writing?
Answer: Setting is one of, if not the most, important elements to me in fiction. I gravitate to novels with a strong sense of place. I work hard to convey the physical worlds of my stories, and in the case of The Stark Beauty of Last Things, it was a joy to convey the gorgeous coastal landscape and to share my love of everything Montauk through the prose.

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
Answer: I definitely didn’t know how the book would end. I used the novel to explore my own thoughts and ambivalences about the meaning and the best uses of land, and there was a point where I had no idea how to resolve the many contradictions I’d set up in the story, and between hope and despair. I tried out many different endings before finally landing on what felt right and feeling resolved that I had found the most authentic way to conclude both the story of Montauk itself and the main characters’ personal stories.

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Visit Céline on her website: 
www.celinekeating.com
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www.facebook.com/AuthorCelineKeating
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LINK for BOOK:
https://www.amazon.com/Stark-Beauty-Last-Things-Novel/dp/1647425778​
PRESS & MEDIA: 
https://celinekeating.com/press/