Writers Read: Linda Kass

Thursday, August 13, 2026

Linda Kass

Linda Kass began her career as a magazine journalist and correspondent for regional and national publications. Along with her forthcoming

novel, World News from Waverley High (September 2026), she is the author of three previous works of historical fiction: Tasa’s Song (2016), A Ritchie Boy (2020), and Bessie (2023). A longtime civic leader, she is the founder and owner of Gramercy Books, an independent bookstore in Central Ohio. Kass lives in Columbus with her husband, Frank; they have four children, six grandchildren, and a labradoodle named Wally.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Kass's reply:

I See You’ve Called in Dead by John Kenney was the latest selection for my personal book club. I happen to love my book club, and all book clubs, because the bring people community and connection around books! I may not have picked this book up on my own, but it was one of our selections because one of our book club members read it and was a fan. And isn’t word of mouth the way most of us find the greatest reads?

Anyway, back to this book. With a darkly comedic yet piercing tone, the author (who happens to be the New Yorker’s “Shouts & Murmurs” columnist) tells a story of life and death and the search for meaning through the novel’s narrator, a depressed obituary writer at the world’s largest wire service. Bud Stanely is a middle-aged man who has lost the spirit of his job and wonders the point of life. After one terrible night—a very bad blind date on top of his ongoing two-year depressed state since his wife ended their marriage—he drinks too many glasses of Scotch to drown his sorrows, decides to write his own fictional and ludicrous obituary, and accidently hits publish. The newspaper where he works wants to fire him but cannot legally terminate a dead person so suspends Bud without pay. While Bud awaits his fate at work, he attends the wakes and funerals of total strangers to learn how to live again. Bud rediscovers life’s joys, with a little help from his friends—Howard, his boss; Tuan, his gay officemate; Tim, his strikingly handsome paralyzed landlord; and Clara, a woman he met at his former mother-in-law’s wake who also attends funerals of people she doesn’t know.

The novel was voted one of the ten funniest books of all time, but the humor was sparsely integrated into a much more somber story about death and dealing with death, the antidote of which is to find the joy and beauty of being alive. Kenney told Scott Simon on NPR: “It's an intense subject, death, but the flip side of it is this valve release of humor, and I very much wanted that to be part of the book.” As a journalism major in college, Kenney was assigned to write his own obituary which sparked his interest in the topic. But, growing up with parents who always read the Boston Globe obituaries must have also made an impact. Kenney dedicated the book to his brother, Tom, who died in 2019 from pancreatic cancer. It was Tom’s ability to insert dark humor ploys even while facing death. That became Kenney’s catalyst for the book.