Kate Hilton

Kate Hilton is the author of The Hole in the Middle and Just Like Family (2017). She also co-authors a non-fiction blog, The Pen Pal Project. Before turning to fiction, Hilton worked in law, higher education, public relations and major gift fundraising. She has an English degree from McGill University and a Law degree from the University of Toronto. She is a working mother, a community volunteer, a voracious reader and a pretty decent cook. Hilton lives with her family in Toronto, where she is working on her third novel.

From Hilton's Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You've said your character Lil emerged first as you started working on the book. How would you say she and your main character, Sophie, represent their respective generations of women?

A: I think that Sophie is quite typical of her generation of working women. In writing about her, and the stress that she experiences in her multiple roles as mother, wife, daughter, friend, boss, and employee, I wanted to capture something universal about Generation X.

In particular, I was interested in how the promise of feminism had been realized, or not, for women in my age group. Many women my age report incredible pressure to excel on all fronts, and there are a number of excellent non-fiction books that discuss this phenomenon, such as Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte. I wanted to explore these conflicts in fiction, through one representative woman (Sophie).

Lil Parker, on the other hand, doesn’t feel the same pressure to conform to the social norms of her generation. The death of her first husband, and her inheritance, has given her freedoms that few other women her age have had. This freedom, in turn, has given her an outsider’s perspective that allows her to comment on Sophie’s efforts to conform to a modern definition of perfect…[read on]

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--Marshal Zeringue