Kathryn Scanlan received a 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for “exceptional accomplishment” in literature. In a survey of her work—including her newest book Kick the Latch—published by The New Yorker, Leslie Jamison says: "Scanlan writes about ordinary life in extraordinary ways by compacting it radically, like pressurizing carbon into diamonds." Scanlan's story collection The Dominant Animal was named a Best Book of 2020 by The Guardian, Southwest Review, and Publishers Weekly, and her first book, Aug 9—Fog, was praised in a starred review by Publishers Weekly as “an outstanding debut, profound and moving: Scanlan’s portrait of an everywoman feels entirely new.” Her writing has been published in NOON, Granta, The Paris Review, Artforum, Harper's, INQUE, and Another Gaze.