Kevin Elias Kaye

Oyster River Pages: What’s your least favorite word?

Kevin Elias Kaye: I have a bunch, but they cycle through: “Curated” and “Artisanal” and “Organic” I find especially specious as they insinuate their way into more and more areas of life. 

ORP: What is the space that has shaped you the most?

KEK: I grew up in Cupertino, CA. The heart of Silicon Valley. When I was a kid, though, there still were small farmhouses and cherry orchards.  My father worked at HP, but my friends’ parents were teachers, a beer delivery driver who moonlit at pizza hut. The engineering types like my father weren’t dotcom types, they were the students who stayed in the library or the lab during the ’60s. The change in the area was inconceivable then inevitable. I always think about that.  

ORP: What are your food issues?

KEK: I have a culinary degree, so my main food issue is overindulgence and, probably, overstating its significance.  I find the current food culture sort of nauseating, the celebrity chefs, the exotic ingredients, the opulence of it all. And lists of best everything from farmstand tomatoes to Slovenian wine. Sounds like the frivolity witnessed during the end of Rome.

ORP: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

KEK: The hardest part of getting something published is actually writing it. 

ORP: What’s next for you artistically?

KEK: The next big project I am taking on is a varsity novel set in a tony, Silicon Valley Catholic School focusing on a distracted Algebra teacher’s attempt to earn tenure in an increasingly casuistic institution.  It’s comedic and satirical and looks at the changes that technology and multiculturalism have in an area known for change but becoming evermore conservative.  

Kevin Elias Kaye lives in Connecticut with his beautiful wife, Tamara, and his daughter, August, and son, Roscoe. He recently finished writing a novel set in Russia between 1999 and 2000. Read his story “The Brief Return of Ozymandias” in our special-themed issue Delta at this link. The story is from a collection of stories set in California where he was born and raised.