“I fidgeted. I squirmed. I’m an adult, by most accounts, so what happened, and should I be feeling this? But perhaps the modal auxiliary is entirely wrong. After finishing the book, I realized that instead of thinking, the narrator had consumed me into its experiences. It had succeeded, at least for a moment, in reducing me to a feeling body only.”

— Writer and Reviewer Ryan Chang for Full Stop Magazine

“I’ve honestly never read anything quite like this grody little blood clot of a book. Story of O meets The Stepford Wives as an uninvited guest makes a bland suburban wedding more memorable than anyone wanted it to be. Really just a great read.”

— Sarah Blackman, contributing to “Cheers to the Weirdos,” a year-end lit favorites list compiled by Jesi Bender for Heavy Feather Review

“Magic blurs with queer smut and kink as the woman seems to intuit exactly what each of her marks wants in their filthiest, softest heart of hearts—even if they don’t yet know they want it. She would also know exactly what you want. Can you imagine anything hotter? Can you imagine anything more terrifying?”

— Chelsea Davis, writer, critic, and interviewer for Electric Literature (One of their most read articles of 2022.)

writes, “White Wedding contains some of the best erotic writing I’ve read in recent memory. There’s a dreamy, psychedelic quality to the way scenes shift from the pleasure mansion, with its color-changing walls, to the wedding ceremony. At the sentence level, the language is explicit, purposeful, and controlled. “

— Author and interviewer Lauren C. Johnson, for The Racket

“If I had one thing to say about Woods from her debut novel, it is this: she does not believe in your veil of innocence. She knows you wear the veil to cope with frustration. We present our sanitized selves because we are scared. We are afraid of others seeing our dark wants but also afraid of ourselves seeing. We’re scared of how we’d feel if we let ourselves have it; so we deny it. Woods attempts to veto our refusal and give it to us anyways.”

— Devin Baron for the lit mag Call Me [Brackets]

Read a conversation about White Wedding, my writing, and my favorite workspace: my bedding.

from The Eric Norcross Podcast

from KALW and Lisa Morehouse

Highlight upcoming work from California and the West.

I talk to Jennifer Lewis about her new book, The New Low.

I talk to Abigail Stewart about her book, Assemblage.

Jan 28 // 1 PM // The San Francisco Botanical Gardens

Part of Green Apple's, Books on the Park reading series.

Featuring: Micheal Foulk, Katie Woods, Sydney Vogl, Truong Tran, and Jaime Cortez

Fri, Mar 10 // 9 AM // Seattle, WA

This panel brings together writers who defy and merge genres and forms to discuss queer expression in messy, multi-faceted hybrid work. Drawing from a range of cultural and literary backgrounds, and examining both their own work and the work of others, these writers will discuss the craft of writing the grief, anger, desire, and joy that insists upon formal contradiction and possibility—refusing to be singularly contained. With Jenny Bitner, Celeste Chan, Chekwube O. Danladi, and Miah Jeffra.

Oct 19 // 7 PM // The Ruby, SF

Moonlit woods and mirrors, insatiable hungers, hidden voyeurs—these are just a few of the elements shared by genres of horror, folklore, and porn. What gives such tropes power to evoke disgust, lust, and pleasure? Why are we attracted to art and literature that create these sometimes intense experiences? Join critic Chelsea M. Davis, cartoonist Trinidad Escobar, and novelist Kathleen J. Woods for a discussion of blending genres, inhabiting the "monstrous," and expressing queer pleasure through decadent, tangled narrative forms.

Oct 22 // 8 PM // Latin American Club, SF

Inspiring ambitions or chimerical delusions? Ethereal surrender or cerebral processing? Fleetwood Mac or the Cranberries? From our cloud-capped towers and LitQuake palace, this group of local writers will share tales of spectral visions, utopian communities, hypnosis contracts, and more, inviting you to submit an (anonymous!) dream of your own. We might even interpret it for you—very, very scientifically. Get ready to flash and yearn with Marya Brennan, Sarah Rose Cadorette, Vinita Goyal, Kathryn Jaller, and Jolene Torr.

September 20, 2022

Club Chicxulub is a fabulist reading series co-created by Matt Carney and Lauren C. Johnson.

Music by Dev Bhat.

Performed and recorded at DecoDance Bar in San Francisco, California.

June 11, 2002

Babylon Salon is a quarterly reading & performance series based in San Francisco.

Since 2007, we've featured award-winning authors (including the Booker Prize, the National Book Award, the Philip K. Award and more) and showcased exciting early-career writers and performers.

I read alongside Kate Folk, Katherine Seligman, Rita Chang-Eppig, and Jennifer Lewis.