Check Out Katja Bartholmess’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Katja Bartholmess.

Hi Katja, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
If you ask me what I am, I’ll tell you I’m a Writer.

As I sit in one of my favorite local coffeeshops in Silverlake, I think I’m almost a cliché of one: Beside me, there’s a marked-up manuscript of my novel draft. I just shared the dates of the next writing sessions I’m hosting at the Heavy Manners Library in Echo Park for fellow local writers. On my laptop, a proposal for a non-fiction book project is waiting for me. And yes, that’s my latest zine edition peeking out of my purse.

But I think you must forgive me for being a bit cliché – it was a winding road that got me here and I’ve waited so long to say that I’m a Writer with my full chest.

It all started on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in communist East Germany where I was born. Germany used to be divided, and my side was the one that drew the shorter stick – a place of few freedoms and many limitations. When I got obsessed with writing right after learning it, my mother procured a mechanical typewriter for me on the black market. Then, a historic stroke of luck – the fall of the Berlin Wall – catapulted me into a new life of freedom. I leapt at the chance to explore the world that used to be closed off to me, tried my hand as barista in London, was a background actor in Japan, and interned as staff reporter in South Africa. I traveled solo across India and once, in Mozambique, I ran on a dare into a field where a sign warned of mines (freedom includes the occasional freedom to make truly idiotic decisions). You just couldn’t nail me down throughout my 20s, I only paused long enough to get degrees in literature and anthropology.

That changed when I first set foot in New York and couldn’t tear myself away for over a decade. I started as a copywriter and brand strategist, ultimately running a creative communications business, working with some of the biggest brands and agencies. I was lucky that my kind of creativity lent itself to establishing a viable career. I was always the one with the vision, the ideas, and the storytelling skills to communicate them to clients and teams.

Many of my friends are musicians, artists, writers, designers and I’ve always admired their willingness to make it work, sometimes scraping by. My career pursuits were different. I was driven to make it in New York like in Frank Sinatra’s song. In my first month in NYC, I hired a business coach and told him: I want to be a successful businesswoman. And we got to work. I’ve achieved many goals that I set for myself, failed at some spectacularly (don’t ask me about that ill-fated startup that ran out of funding almost immediately).

I’m skipping a few steps and sometimes I joke that I completed every level of the game called Career and got off the ladder once I’d collected all the available titles. (The less glamorous version of this story mentions that I really burned out during the pandemic and that a family tragedy reset my priorities completely – sometimes life has to kick you in the face so you can find your new path.)

Since I got off the career ladder, I moved to Los Angeles, where I finally got to nurture the literary writer that I’d kept bottled up. In those four years since I moved here, I’ve completed a novel manuscript that I’m currently workshopping as part of a masterclass at UCLA Extension. I’ve been working on a proposal for a nonfiction book about how it’s never too late for change, and on a collection of slightly spooky bedtime stories. A few stories and excerpts have been published in the Journal of the Westbrae Literary Group and in Lit Angels, Francesca Lia Block’s literary magazine and I’m only getting started.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Oh, the road has forked more times than I can remember. Sometimes, a bridge needed to be burned. Sometimes, the road stopped, and I had to trust that the dirt path in front of me would lead somewhere.

But let me be specific.

There is a personal cost to choosing to live far from where you’re from. You’ll miss the living daylights out of your loved ones almost constantly. From where I sit right now, it’s 6,000 miles to my family and friends in Germany. And it’s 2,700 miles to my close-as-family friends in New York. It sometimes sucks beyond the telling of it, but you just have to find your way to make it work. I believe that I have elevated keeping-in-touch to an art form. You have to go the extra mile. It’s worth it. It’s because of those extra efforts that I‘ve been able to establish a close bond with my 9-year-old nephew in Germany despite having lived on a different continent for most of his life. I read bedtime stories to him a few times a week and he tells me about his ping pong competitions and drum practice (we’re also in a band together, The Hot Butts, but you won’t have heard of us, we only play for relatives).

I also had to become comfortable with starting over. In every new place, I had to build new relationships, find my people. Had to find my neighborhoods, my places. For me, those are usually bookstores, concert venues, and art galleries. Los Angeles was not as straight forward as New York in that regard. This place keeps everything hidden and it goes on for all eternity in every direction. Luckily, since moving to the Eastside almost two years ago, everything fell into place.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I take pride in having completed a manuscript of a novel. It’s a story I’m eager to tell: About an East German star athlete, primed to become a perfect comrade who collides with the regime and sees her future unravel – first through the authorities’ retaliation, and then in the dangerous company she keeps amid the chaos after the Berlin Wall’s fall.

What makes me almost giddy with joy, however, is that I’ve been able to foster a community of fellow local writers – most of them from Silverlake, Echo Park and Los Feliz. Earlier this year, I started bi-weekly communal writing sessions I called Writing Gets Lonely. The title spoke to many – writing does get lonely – and now I get to look forward to everyone who comes through the door at Heavy Manners Library where I host these sessions every couple of weeks. I love sharing space with my fellow writers while working on our manuscripts, stories and, of course, screenplays (this is LA!). Once it became clear that the Writing Gets Lonely community had become something real, I started to curate public readings featuring their voices. Being able to give fellow writers a literal stage is truly the icing on the cake.

For me, the lesson in all this has been that if you need something to exist – like I needed a no frills/no prompts writing community – chances are others might need it too. Community is the key to most things. I want to shoutout Matthew James-Wilson, the founder of Heavy Manners Library, a lending library, secondhand bookstore and community space in Echo Park. Matthew’s been such a support and I’m eternally grateful. We need places like that, where we can gather and explore, were real togetherness can happen – not just transaction.

After one of the last public readings I curated, one of the writers who shared their work on stage told me: “You’re incredible for creating community in a place as notoriously averse to it as LA.” I have to say: That’s easily one of Top 10 compliments I’ve received in my life.

Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
If you’re an artist, I hope that you will find a way to protect and explore that gift. I heavily leaned into the commercially exploitable aspects of my creativity. Working as a capital C creative in branding and marketing communications has given me a good life, but that novel I always wanted to write never got written and my pursuit to become an author never got off the starting blocks until I completely turned my back on that career. No shade, it was fun, but my creative spark was always already zapped.

It makes me happy to see writer friends in their 20s who caught on to that reality much quicker and have made conscious decisions to “protect their peace” and work with their hands instead to make rent.

There is something to be said about trying to be aligned with your values and the best version of yourself as much as you can. I wish I could say it makes life easier, but I don’t think it does. I believe you might feel better about it in the long run though.

I will always recommend checking in with yourself periodically and asking yourself whether this is still the kind of life you want to live. And if you find that it’s not, increase your courage and make some changes!

You don’t ever have to feel stuck. You always have one more move. Everything can happen. You can make it happen. I’m rooting for you!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bartholmess.com
• Instagram: @kbartholmess
• soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/kbartholmess

Image Credits
A Reel Good Studio (Shakkà Smith & Shawntol Cadogon-Drakes) Matthew James-Wilson Daniel Susla