Author Night at Hubbell Library: Kayla Min Andrews – The Fetishist

In this hilariously savage, poignant novel by acclaimed author Katherine Min, a grieving daughter’s revenge on the man who caused her mother’s death sets off a series of unexpected reckonings.

Writer, editor, and teacher, Kayla Min Andrews discusses her mother’s posthumously published second novel, The Fetishist. Andrews helped bring the book to publication, including editing the manuscript and writing the afterword, which she says was an “intense and inspiring and emotional experience — like collaborating with Mom from beyond the grave.”

The Fetishist is the story of three people—Kyoko, a Japanese American punk-rock singer full of rage and grief; Daniel, a philandering violinist forced to confront the wreckage of his past; and Alma, the love of Daniel’s life, a Korean American cello prodigy long adored for her beauty, passion, and talent, but who spends her final days examining if she was ever, truly, loved.

Katherine Min‘s short stories appeared in Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, The Three-penny Review, Glimmer Train, and others. She received an NEA grant, a Pushcart Prize, a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award, two New Hampshire State Council on the Arts Fellowships and a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship, and attended residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Jentel, Ucross, Hambidge, the Millay Colony, and Ledig House. Her debut novel Secondhand World was a runner-up for the PEN-Bingham Award in 2007.

Kayla Min Andrews is a biracial, Korean American writer living in New Orleans. She has a piece forthcoming from The Massachusetts Review and has been published in Lit Hub, Cagibi, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Asymptote. Her flash essay “Old Kleenex” was nominated for a Best of the Net 2020. Kayla assisted Putnam on the posthumous publication of her mother’s novel The Fetishist (January 2024), including editing the manuscript and writing the afterword. Kayla is an MFA candidate in fiction at Randolph and is working on a novel.

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