One of the best books of the year is now available

And I got an interview with author T Kira Madden

I finished Whidbey, by T Kira Madden, on Jan. 4, 2026.

On Jan. 5, 2026, I deemed it the best book of the year.

Early, yes, but two and a half months later, I stand by the declaration. I’ve never read anything like it. It’s part literary fiction, part whodunnit, part murder mystery and part survival story. This is a book that transcends genre, by design; Madden is a fiction writer who accidentally became a memoirist in 2019. Her debut essay collection, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, is devastating and gutsy, an excavation of trauma dotted with moments of poignant humor.

Whidbey will make you uncomfortable. It will challenge what you think about “the perfect victim.” It explores the complexities of survivors, of victims, and of abusers —and who enables them.

This week, I spoke with Madden about her writing and editing processes, her thoughts on genre, and her book’s astrological signs (she’s open to audience interpretation).

Read the interview below — and her new book, as soon as you can.

Whidbey Island — as well as Florida — are such major characters in the book. Tell me about your relationship with these places.

I first visited Whidbey Island in early 2017, and I’ve returned about a dozen times since, spending weeks there each time. I love the island, love its people, its waters, its wildlife – it is such a thrillingly unbothered place. I knew I wanted the book to begin in transit, a woman on the run to her fantastic refuge. I also knew I wanted to dismantle that fantasy.

On the other side of the country, Mary-Beth and Linzie remain tethered to Florida. There are psychic ties as well as legal ones (to me, this book is largely about being confined to identities and places). I was born and raised in Florida, and I’ve a complicated relationship to this place because it holds my past, my history—with that, my fear. I also have fierce reverence for Florida. I hope these feelings permeate the text.

The first scene of the novel is based on a true experience. Why did this interaction stay with you?

A stranger on the ferry boat to Whidbey really did ask me why I was so sad, and really did ask me if I wanted him to murder the man who’d abused me (I said no, for the record). It wasn’t the murder proposition that stayed with me most – we’ve seen this in the set-ups for thrillers, the Highsmith Strangers on a Train request moment, etc. – I was more struck by my willingness to tell this stranger everything, disclosing a story I’d kept close to the chest for my entire life. What did I want this stranger to see in me? My fear? My suffering? A toughness? I’m always interested in the moments of our lives in which we step out of character, when we surprise ourselves. For me, that’s where something deeper lives.

What do you want people to know about survivors of childhood sexual abuse?

We’re everywhere. There’s no monolith. It’s no survivor’s responsibility to perform healing, forgiveness, rage, bravery, or anything else to fit the perfect victim narrative. Recovery from any trauma can be messy, non-linear, wild. I hope this book honors the myriad ways we may or may not process grief. None of it changes what happened.

I read in an interview that at one point Whidbey was 800 pages. How did you get it down to its current length?

Excellent editors and first readers. My editor is Jessica Williams at Mariner, and she helped me shape this book over the course of many, many years. I’d bloat it then cut, bloat it then cut, repeat. My writing group helped me see the central questions, the stakes in the ground; my wife, the editor Hannah Beresford, helped me tighten on a macro and line level; the list goes on. I owe so much to my writing community, many of whom are listed in the book’s acknowledgements. I’d have a 5,000-page book without them.

What’s your writing process like? How do you start?

Exploratory draft on the typewriter. I never have a strict plan or outline, only characters, voices, and questions. I believe in Céline Sciamma’s method: list out scenes of desire (scenes/moments/images you want to write, it doesn’t matter if you know why), then utility scenes. Eventually, all utility scenes should be absorbed into the scenes of desire.

I do that. I write the characters into so many situations just to see what they’re made of, how they behave. Eventually, the story shape begins to reveal itself to me. I transcribe the typewritten pages onto my laptop, send it off to aforementioned first readers, and then I discuss it with them. I edit from there, all the while collecting words, smells, research, interviews, songs—anything for the mood board of the book. The mood board is everything.

Can you talk about your decision to tell the book through these three specific characters? I’m especially curious about how Linzie came to life.

Birdie and Mary-Beth came first. For years, they were two separate short stories; in one, Birdie boarded the ferry to Whidbey (essentially, this story was what became Ch. 1 of the book). In the second, a mother was cleaning her house anticipating the arrival of her son who’d served a long prison sentence after abusing children. After a few years of working on these stories, I decided to combine them – how would things play out if the mother’s son was Birdie’s abuser?

Linzie came from a more personal place. In the early drafts of Whidbey, I was appearing in court while also touring and promoting my first book, a memoir called Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, a story largely about trauma and suffering. I became obsessed with the parallels – how it felt to be coached into a “credible” or “believable” or “likable” Jane Doe on the stand, while also trying to be a reliable, likable memoir narrator. What did it say about my suffering for me to create a commodified product from it?

In the first draft of Whidbey, we only knew Linzie through the chapters of her memoir. My early readers told me she felt like a punching bag, a manifestation of my own guilt. I had to learn how to love her, they said. So I did. And I hope that trajectory remains potent in the text. I hope a reader might discover her, and be surprised by her, the way that I was.

In my opinion, Whidbey is a whodunnit. A crime novel. It’s also coming-of-age and literary fiction. What are your thoughts on genre?

I have complicated feelings about genre, but I understand how it’s a helpful organizing device for booksellers, and how it can be supremely helpful for readers to find something they most want to read. I consider Whidbey a work of literary fiction dressed up as a thriller, which is to say I think readers who want certain dependable qualities of thriller/crime might be disappointed in Whidbey, but those who are curious about the in-between might be excited.

To be clear, yes, there is a whodunnit/whydunit at the center of the story. And yes, the whodunnit is answered. But the book also interrogates form itself and asks what questions are worth answering, and to whom, and by whom.

When did you know who killed Calvin? Did this change at all over the course of writing?

I knew from the beginning who did it. It took me longer to understand the choreographies of how and why. In my penultimate draft, I panicked and tried to pin it on somebody else, just to see if it would go. My editor and other trusted beta-readers hated it. I always encourage students to push past the “first draft idea” (that is, the simplest way things could go) but this was a good learning lesson: sometimes that first gut instinct is best.

What books/TV shows/films/essays/albums did you read/watch/listen to while writing this book?

Whidbey had quite a constellation over the many years it took to write, and I’m big into cork/mood boards to build the world of a project. This book is Carrie meets Baby Reindeer meets The Chicks’ ‘Goodbye Earl’ meets the works of Dostoevsky. It’s May December and Mona Simpson’s Lawns and the ethical problems of both Hitchcock and Highsmith. It’s Connie Francis’s voice, the glisten of slug slime, the heart-forward dark absurdity of Lynda Barry and Katherine Dunn, the lyric rage of Lidia Yuknavitch, the gothic sparkle of Yoko Ogawa, the fury I feel towards my former literary hero, Alice Munro, the hope I once felt reading the victim impact statement of my dear friend and true hero, Chanel Miller.

Any favorite bookstores you want to shout out?

I have many linked on my website for purchasing options because it’s so hard to choose! I love any indie bookstore to the ends of the earth; they make my life as both a reader and a writer possible. I always like to give a special shoutout to Binnacle Books of Beacon, NY, a place I once lived. In addition to being a great book shop run by great people, they do a ton of mutual aid work offering a community fridge, collecting books for incarcerated readers, and offering rides to correctional facilities to volunteers.

Your book is a pisces. Any idea what its rising and moon are?

I’m the worst gay in the world in that I do not speak astrology. But I’m going to take a guess and say Gemini/Gemini. Somebody better at this should read it and tell me!