Wryly funny and quietly lyrical, Kate Doyle’s short story collection I Meant It Once is a collective portrait of the ways in which seemingly incidental moments can come to define the stories we tell ourselves, and of young women seeking a way to break away from the expectations of others. American author Mary-Beth Hughes says “Kate Doyle’s gorgeous, electric fiction upends expectations about how stories are told and what exactly needs telling.” Following a reading from the book, Kate will be in conversation with Jamal Khadar to celebrate the Amsterdam launch of I Meant It Once. 

Kate Doyle is an American writer based in Amsterdam. She is the author of I Meant It Once, published in 2023 by Algonquin Books in the US and Corsair in the UK and Europe, hailed as “quietly devastating…unmistakably individual and exciting” by the Irish Times and named a best debut book of 2023 by Debutiful. Her writing has appeared in the Chicago Review of Books, A Public Space, Split Lip, No Tokens, Electric Literature, and elsewhere.

 Jamal Khadar is an Amsterdam-based writer, researcher and radio host. His writing on music and culture has been featured in The Guardian, Bandcamp Daily and PopChange. He hosts “Reimagining Country” on NTS Radio, and co-hosts the podcast “But Is It Funny” with The Guardian comedy critics.