Kristen Radtke on the Embarrassments of Loneliness

“That opened up something for me, the idea that I was never going to feel sure of what I was doing… I’m never going to feel confident that I’m making the right choice or that I’m the right person to tell a story or that I’m not going to make a complete fool of myself. You just have to work in spite of that.”

Kristen Radtke is the author of the graphic nonfiction book Imagine Wanting Only This (2017), and the forthcoming books Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness (July 2021), for which she received a 2019 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, and Terrible Men, a graphic novel, all from Pantheon.

She is the art director and deputy publisher of The Believer magazine.