Kayla King on The Half-Life of Lying and The Promise of Someday
- Paige B.
- Mar 24
- 14 min read
Last Tuesday, we sat down to discuss not only her career as a writer but also her passions and motivations for storytelling, connecting with community, and cryptid creatures. After a couple of hours on my mismatched couches, letting my curiosity get the best of me, I was lucky enough to question her about the 10-year journey that culminated in this project. The interview felt far more like a much-needed therapy session, which happens every time Kayla and I sit down to chat, and that, in my biased opinion, is a testament to her character and wisdom that bleed into her writing so gracefully.
This Tuesday, Kayla will be celebrating The Half-Life of Lying at her Book Launch party — 7:30pm at Sideline on Hertel Avenue, where she hosts Bigfoot Book Club with her friend and fellow artist, Tina.
Kayla and I met on a random evening in Buffalo, NY. We found ourselves at the same networking event, miserable about our current work situations, looking for a new opportunity or even just a whisper of one. I simply turned around to introduce myself to whoever was nearest and ended up inserting myself in her conversation with friends, Tina and Julia. Since that moment, we’ve stayed in touch and become great friends, sharing witchy stories, crying over past relationships, reading Bigfoot erotica, and watching each other follow our respective dreams. It’s an honor to publish my first interview with Kayla, someone I admire deeply not only for her career as a writer and artist but also for her wisdom and kindness. So please, without further ado, grab a drink and get comfortable because we both have the gift of gab, and this is already lengthy (just how we like it). Cin Cin!
Kayla King is an author of fiction and poetry, celebrating the debut of her poetry collection, The Half-Life of Lying, which she has spent the past 10 years bringing to life. On top of that, she is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of three collectives: Pages Penned in Pandemic, The Elpis Pages, and The Elpis Letters, which proceeds to charitable organizations. Find her on Substack at Ok, Kayla, where she writes about her current hyper fixations, and in Bigfoot Book Club, which is, fittingly, how we met.
“The origin of how I became a writer started off with poetry, so it feels really nice that my debut publication is a poetry book. It feels very full circle.”
Kayla started writing poetry in 7th and 8th grade, which, in her words, was most likely very melodramatic and very bad. This led her to a high school creative writing class, where she was told she “wrote beyond her years.” Still writing poetry by the time she went to college for interior design, her first semester at Villa Maria College. “Halfway through the semester, I realized I do not want to be an interior designer. What put me over the edge was the wood shopping.”
She then transferred to Buffalo State College to study writing, with no plan, and had to wait a semester to even get into the writing program. Kayla herself said, “I wanna do this really big thing, I’ll figure it out as I go along. I always say, “My ambition will be the death of me.” That ambition, however, was not the death of her; it was the opening to a new opportunity, where she pivoted to fiction and began working on a novel that would follow her to grad school.
Between undergrad and grad school, Kayla spent a month in New York City, enrolled in a summer program at NYU, where a mentor once told her, “Your greatest gift and your biggest weakness is the fact that you were a poet first.” This was around the time Kayla really started to hone in on her style and voice as a writer. Whether it be fiction or poetry, narrative is a constant in all of her work, telling stories and building worlds through unique and beautiful language that carries through each and every one of her perfectly curated projects. Hence, her brief stint in interior design: Kayla has an innate gift for creating life from nothing, like an empty room or a blank page.
She has a very extensive resume as both a writer and an editor. Working as an editor for three years on an online magazine, “One for 1,000,” which eventually dissolved, prompting her to create a blog series titled “Pages Penned in the Pandemic.” The idea came to her as a shower thought, where she says she has all her best ideas. The blog series was opened internationally, which received 350 submissions, with the requirement that they be written during the pandemic. With a handful of themes like isolation, grief, and looking towards the future, the project took a surprisingly hopeful turn and was Kayla’s first look into independent publishing, donating all the profits to 826 National to benefit young writers.
Kayla’s next project, “The Elpis Pages: A Collective”, took on more of a political role during the consideration of overturning Roe V. Wade. In her words, Kayla, a “whimsy/ rage-filled feminist, knew she wanted to do something about it but wasn’t in a place politically to do anything big. “I firmly believe storytelling and bringing artists together to use their voices make a big impact in the world.” The Elpis Pages were designed for women writers to use their voice to write about their experiences, which led to so many stories about the varying degrees of the female experience, girlhood, and, of course, abortion. All the proceeds from this project went to Planned Parenthood.
Kayla was also invited to speak at one of the first Women’s Marches that same year, which she discusses further in her letter from the editor in “The Elpis Pages.” Unfortunately, as we know, Roe V. Wade was overturned, but that did not stop Kayla. She responded with “The Elpis Letters: A Collective,” opening submissions to all women, including trans women and nonbinary people. The proceeds from the letters went to The Center for Reproductive Rights.
“It was a really interesting collection of stories, and there’s actually one poet who I got to see through three different books grappling with her own abortion. Getting to work with writers who trusted me from Pages Penned in the Pandemic to submit again and again... Building relationships and friendships with writers around the world and giving people a platform and a voice.”
Now Kayla is celebrating her debut poetry collection, The Half-Life of Lying, which she has spent the past ten years bringing to life. In her own words, “What follows in The Half-Life of Lying is a lyrical exploration of selves inherited and invented, of mothers and daughters, of lovers and ghosts bound by devotion, rupture, and unfinished conversations. Tender and unflinching, these poems trace the quiet ways we are shaped by those who came before us, by what we carry and leave behind, and offer a language for becoming, again and again.”
What follows is our condensed Q&A — and if that surprises you, it shouldn’t. For the full, unedited conversation, stay tuned!
“So much of what came up was being a twenty-year-old and then being a thirty-year-old and figuring out what is life and relationships that I’ve had. A lot of what’s in here is fictionalized versions of the people I’ve met or things I’ve experienced. Aside from all the Taco Bell references, because I am a ride-or-die Taco Bell fan.”
Q: How does your previous experience with grief and the loss of friendships tie into your poems, considering your track record of publications all fall into this realm of loss in some capacity?
A: I think it is two different things. I think it’s my high school teacher saying I was writing beyond my years, and I’ve always felt this deep grief for a love I did not lose in this life. I love the idea of past lives; I’ve done past-life regressions. I’m very woo-woo and into all of that stuff, and I did have a psychic reading where she talked about this love that I had that lived in a lighthouse, and lighthouses play a huge role in my writing. So I think I’m writing about this grief and this imagined idea... The what-ifs and the not knowing, I think that’s what drives me as a writer. I can picture all of these different ideas. Does it hurt me to write it? Amazing, then it’s actually gonna sit and settle with someone in the future.
So often when people are writing about these things, they write about the big moments. It’s really the tiny moments. It’s peeling an orange and thinking about the love of your life that’s just done, and you can’t cut your nails because you just buried this person.
Q: When you have moments like this, where you need to write about this, do you find yourself wanting to have it be as true as possible, or do you prefer to elaborate further and make it more poetic than it was?
A: The really visceral moments tend to exist just as they happened. Some of the others are entirely fictionalized. There’s a poem I wrote in there about a guy in grad school, actually, I wrote a lot about that guy in grad school. I didn’t write physical letters to that person or bury them in the ground, but I’m imagining what different versions of us would do. I wanted to build on this idea of letter writing, committing things to the page, and then burying them away, and I think that’s such a nice metaphor for what this book became.
I have so many random lines in my notes app that I cobbled together to create this book, and it just feels really lovely to have all these tangible bits and pieces that I can look back on, and to see that I was able to make this massive world out of them.
Q: Have you found the writing process itself or finalizing this project over the course of ten years to be more healing, and what was that discovery like over such a long time period?
A: I feel like so many of these poems came out of deep, wounded places. Actually, it’s one thing I’m so proud of, and going back and looking at the Kayla of ten years ago, who was just so sad and didn’t think this book was ever going to happen. It’s a promise of someday, and I dreamed really big for it and submitted so many places, and it was a “no” every single time... I didn’t see how amazing I was, and now I tell everybody all the time that I’m an incredible person, and getting to that place in my life meant getting through my twenties and into my thirties, and loving all the weird bits about myself.
I think, really, the main catharsis has been going back through all of this and having a deep breath moment of “I did it, it’s done!” Getting to close this chapter and move onto the next set of poems, and I don’t know what that collection is going to look like, but to be able to close that chapter... feels really good to close the door and have it out in the world. Hopefully, it finds the people that need it.
Q: What would be the advice you would give to someone, knowing that your capability of writing and publishing, to someone starting out who doesn’t have that same faith in themselves?
A: Stay in the moment. Sit in your discomfort. I think we are so quick to scroll on TikTok for the quick fix, when really you have to sit in the discomfort and figure your shit out. It’s not even that time heals all wounds, but I think sitting in the discomfort, figuring yourself out, and learning how to exist in that is huge. And dream a bigger dream. Switch projects. You’re not married to this, you’re not fully committed to this, and maybe it will come back into your life when you’re in a different phase, and maybe you’re just not in the right era of life to approach this yet.
Q: What did you find to be the media that saved you in those moments of doubt or uncertainty? Because I know you’re a big movie girl.
A: I think bookwise, at the time I had just read Sylvia Plath for the first time, and I cannot discredit how impactful reading “The Bell Jar” was as a twenty-something. I wanted to know more about writers and the filmmaking experience, and I was always buying the double-disc DVD. I wanted the behind-the-scenes, I wanted the director’s commentary. I wanted to see how people were crafting things and making better worlds... Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk before “Big Magic” came out was hugely impactful. The Comet, starring Emmy Rosem and Justin Long, is one of the most incredible pieces of film that has ever existed, and that’s something that hasn’t faded. It’s told in a non-linear way, which I think is what this poetry book does. We’re weaving in and out of certain things, and we may come back to a place, but it’s peppered throughout the way this narrative is built. And then I also really loved Stuck in Love, which was another story about writers. I was so interested in what it was like to be a writer and why it hurt so much to experience these things.
Q: How do you even have the words for all of this? Do you just have all of them in your brain or do you ever use a thesaurus?
A: Rarely use a thesaurus. So this is something that actually creeps both of my best friends out, where, like, I’ll use a word not knowing what it means, but I have the word. Use it correctly. I think, like, and I have had psychics tell me that, like, I channel when I write sometimes, and I write with an older voice.
I think so often too because I was a reader at such a young age, I’ve collected so many words that they just spill out, nd because I like the way something sounds. I do gravitate towards alliteration a lot, and there are certain words that I just really, really like, so those tend to come out in a lot of my writing.
Q: You designed the cover yourself, with the eyes and the appearance of plastic on the outside.
A: I have designed all of my book covers, which is so fun. Even though I didn’t go to school for graphic design, I just love my CanvaPro account, and I’m getting the most out of my subscription. For this one specifically, I just loved the idea of looking into someone’s eyes, lying to them, and being able to tell if someone is lying. Because the book is about lies and the half-life being the degradation of that lie. When you tell a lie, how long does it take to break down? Is it years, is it centuries? Does it always just live out there, and what are you hiding behind your eyes? On the back, I loved the idea of the plastic, as if you’re unearthing these things held in plastic for the last ten years.
Q: Can you tell us more about the inspiration behind that, and about the Magpie on the back cover, which may not be known to those who don’t know its significance to you?
A: The Magpie is so fun. I had a friend ask me what animal I would be, and I said a crow and then a fox, and she said I was more of a magpie. I love this idea of crows that gather trinkets and give them to other people, and I am so curious about the world and how stoic foxes are, and they can smell things in dens and dig down to the deeper earth to find the truth of things.
The Magpie is my symbol of dreaming big, big things are coming. I actually have a writing studio, it’s a shed in my backyard, called Magpie Manor, and this was my first publication out of Magpie Manor.
Q: Lastly, we have to talk about Bigfoot Book Club. How did this come to be?
A: Tina, my very good friend from Buffalo, NY, we worked together and were reading a lot of the same books. It was a very good era of reading with My Year of Rest and Relaxation, The Immortalist, Rules of Magic, and then we both read The Pisces by Melissa Broder, which is great, it’s about a merman and a woman who fuck. Tina and I were like, we both really like this book, would you ever wanna start a Bigfoot book club, and it started as a joke, she just always really liked Bigfoot. We could do Bigfoot erotica, and this was like 2019, pandemic happens, obviously everyone is shut in, we’re not doing anything. There was finally a day when Revolution Gallery opened up, so we went there, and they had cocktails, and we were like, fuck it, do we just start Bigfoot Book Club? One of the bartenders said, “If you start a Bigfoot book club, I would totally go.” So we were like, fine, we’ll do it. Another year passes. I should state it wasn’t for lack of trying, Tina and I are two of the busiest people, in between all of this, I was putting out three books, it was really just time, and finally the time worked, and we found the first book we wanted.
But what I think this book club has offered us is a really safe space to talk with your girls, and guys, about sex in a really comfortable way. Getting down to it, I am so much more comfortable talking about life and love, and sex because we’ve read these really funny books. I’m prereading everything, so I’m screening probably 5-10 a month to find one less heinous than the others for book club, because at Bigfoot book club, we want consent. Since it takes a lot to get there... and the Bigfoot erotica that I’m writing will not have any kind of breeding kinks and will be consensual.
Q: Part of DGM is “No act is too small. No dream is too Big. So what’s the smallest act you’ve done that’s made the biggest impact in your career as a writer? And what’s your biggest dream to put out into the universe?
A: I would say my smallest act is being kind to people. So many amazing experiences that I’ve had have been offering a piece of kindness or feedback, speaking to someone at a networking event. Showing up and seeing people. I’m the person who, if I were at a table of ten people and you’re trying to tell a story and everyone fades off, I’m locked in. I appreciate that you’re showing up, that you’re telling me this story, and I will be engaged with it... It’s like reciprocity, and good things will come back if you put good things out into the world.
My biggest dream. Magpie Manor is an actual brick-and-mortar. We have spaces for people to come and write, and it’s a flexible spending; it’s hard to be a writer and find good, comfortable spaces to exist in. We would run weekly fellowship programs where visiting authors would come in and give feedback to people, and we were able to pay those authors and also allow anyone who needed that space to run in tandem. Supporting young writers, I don’t think they’re getting enough support. The arts are dying, so we need to make sure we give that support. And having a shelf of all my books, I wanna keep writing. I guess even a bigger dream, writing a musical. It’s gonna happen.
Kayla is the kind of person who pushes you to achieve your dreams, so it’s no surprise that hers include supporting and amplifying young writers like herself. An author of fiction and poetry, an editor, blogger, founder, and witch barely scratches the surface of who Kayla is as a person. I hope this interview sheds some light on both her magical mind and her punctilious projects. I used a thesaurus for that one, I’ll have to admit.
Till next time, stay flirty, stay thirsty, stay in the moment, and sit in your discomfort. When you start to feel like your world is crashing down, write about it. Who knows, you could be laying the foundation for a devastatingly beautiful poetry collection a decade from now. Dreams shouldn’t have a deadline; rather, they should have an intended destination. Watch more movies together, make more movies together. Read more books together, write more books together.
DGM.
For more info on Kayla King, check out her website, Substack, and social media! Join us this evening to celebrate Kayla and her debut poetry collection at Sidebar on Hertle at 7pm.
“Bring your friends. Bring your ghosts. Bring your chaos ✨” -Kayla King.
Poems & page numbers referenced in Q&A:
“Translations. Lost, or the Sound of Memory Leaving” (pg. 26)
“It’s After Midnight in the Kitchen” (pg. 44)
“You Weren’t a Museum; You Were a Box of Matches” (pg. 100)
“Mindless” (pg. 113)
“Another Letter I Write to You and Sylvia” (pg.115)
“Sometimes I Write Letters to You and Sylvia” (pg.120)
“Something You Called Sleight of Hand” (pg.122)
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