Evening Post Books, the book publishing division of Evening Post Publishing, publisher of the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper The Post and Courier, announced the forthcoming publication of “In Light of Everything,” a moving and incisive novel by Charleston literary leader Kate Connor.
Connor is the founder of Revisionist, a nonprofit literary magazine and workshop hub that hosts events celebrating women writers, artists and culinary voices, as well as the boutique cookbook publisher Mise En Place Publishing.
Scheduled for publication in March 2027, Connor’s debut literary novel is a multigenerational story of three women bound by family, art, motherhood and the difficult decision to choose yourself when society has consistently pressured you to choose otherwise.
Set in Charleston across decades, “In Light of Everything” follows three generations of women — Eleanor, Margaret and Laura — as each confronts the emotional architecture of marriage, the weight of motherhood and the possibility of leaving the life she has built.
At the center of the novel is Laura, a mother and writer whose unraveling marriage leads her to investigate the life of her late grandmother, Eleanor, a gifted painter whose story has long been buried by family silence. As Laura pieces together Eleanor’s life and early death, she begins to see how grief, repression, artistic longing and emotional inheritance have reverberated across generations — and how she is destined either to repeat that pattern or become the first to break it.
Woven between Laura’s present-day story and the lives of the women who came before her, “In Light of Everything” explores the mental load of marriage and motherhood, postpartum depression and mental health, the sacrifices demanded of women’s creative lives, and the quiet, destabilizing loneliness that can exist within the modern landscape of marriage.
It is at once a novel about mothers and daughters, womanhood and artistic identity, and generational trauma and the steps people take to continue or end the cycle.
About the Author
Kate Connor founded the boutique cookbook publishing company Mise En Place Publishing, which champions the belief that everyone’s story deserves to be told. To date, Mise has produced and published two cookbooks: “On the Square: A Community That Made a Restaurant” and “Harbinger & Harken Cookbook.”
She is also the founder of Revisionist, a Charleston nonprofit literary magazine highlighting women artists, writers, poets and culinarians. Connor started a women’s writing series titled “In Her Own Words,” in which writers share their work at various stages of the creative process.
In July 2024, she earned her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She continues to write essays about motherhood, divorce and culinary topics on her Substack newsletter, “unpublished.”
She lives in Charleston with her young son, James; their food-motivated Cavachon, Truffles; and their gregarious cat, Luna.
Launch Event
Kate Connor will celebrate the publication of “In Light of Everything” with a public launch event in Charleston in spring 2027. The evening will honor the novel’s debut and explore the themes at its heart, including motherhood, marriage, artistic identity and the inherited stories that shape women’s lives.
Additional details, including venue and ticketing information, will be announced closer to publication.