Q&A: Jarod K. Anderson, Author of ‘Strange Animals’

We chat with author Jarod K. Anderson about Strange Animals, which follows an ordinary man who discovers a hidden world of supernatural creatures—and an unexpected home—in this enchanting contemporary fantasy debut.

Hi, Jarod! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

I’m a nature-nerd who lives in a little house tucked between oaks and a cemetery. When a friend or family member has a snake in their basement or a possum in their garage, they call me. These days, I’m a fulltime writer, but I’ve worked as a college English instructor, a marketing director, and in all sorts of fundraising roles for schools and nonprofits. I enjoy videogames, kung fu movies, and volunteering with my local parks. I’m currently trying to learn embroidery and I’ve only screamed in frustration once or twice.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

When I was ten, I had a 5^th grade teacher named Ms. Woolard who read Mary Oliver poems to the class and gave me a copy of My Side of the Mountain. (There’s a subtle shoutout to Ms. Woolard in my new novel.) She encouraged me to enter a statewide Ohio poetry contest and I won! I’ve been hooked on language and stories ever since.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: It’s either The Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone or Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic.
• The one that made you want to become an author: The Hobbit. I had the audiobook on cassette and would listen to it quietly in the dark when I was supposed to be sleeping. The realization that somebody wrote that story, that it wasn’t just a found artifact from another world, filled me with a sense of awe and possibility.
• The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. Some aspects of that book feel to me like they shouldn’t work; but they absolutely do. I love that novel. It’s a, “wait, how did he do that?” sort of book. It captures my imagination both as a reader and writer.

Your debut fantasy novel, Strange Animals, is out February 10^th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Creepy. Cozy. Beautifully odd nature.

What can readers expect?

Our main character is killed by a city bus, then his death is undone and a giant crow gives him an acorn. That’s the first couple pages. After that, it gets weird. The story starts out a bit unsettling, but it’s ultimately a book about making friends with our strange and lovely world. It’s about found family, coming to terms with the unknown, and a man finding himself through getting lost in the woods.

Where did the inspiration for Strange Animals come from?

Partly, it came from the feeling of concealed depth and watchful presence I feel every time I set foot in the woods. When I go sit beside a maple tree in a forest, the longer I remain still and attentive, the more life I sense around me. Maybe I’ll spot a centipede stitching her way through the leaf litter or a downy woodpecker tip-tapping a rhythm up a nearby tree trunk. In a very real way, nature is full of hidden wonders if you take the time to notice. So, what if I could dial up my perception another notch or two? What might I see then? In that same vein, the book is also inspired by my episodic indie fiction podcast The CryptoNaturalist, which is sort of a single-narrator nature show about wildlife that doesn’t technically exist. I describe the podcast as “real love for imaginary nature.” Originally, I started writing Strange Animals to explore the origin of my podcast’s very odd narrator.

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

There’s a backwoodsy oddball named Dancer in the book. She owns Candle-Fly Camp, one of the novel’s major settings. I really loved writing her dialog because she let me lean into my weirder side and use some unusual family sayings like, “don’t tell your mother how to milk a duck.” Much of the biological and found family I cherish in my own life could be described as “warm weirdos,” and Dancer let me bring that brand of warmth into the story.

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

Between my podcast and just being a constant daydreamer, I know too much about the world of this novel. So, deciding which details belong in these pages and which could probably stay inside my head was sometimes a difficult puzzle. I guess I overcame that challenge in two ways. The first (minor) way involved taking breaks between drafts so I could switch from writer-brain to reader-brain and edit accordingly. The second (major) way was working with amazing people like my agent Rach Crawford and my editor Julian Pavia. Plus, my wife Leslie J. Anderson is a brilliant writer whose novel The Unmothers was a New York Times best horror fiction pick in 2024, so I am embarrassingly fortunate in the expert-advice department.

What’s next for you?

I’m kind of a classic ADHD creative type. Beyond fiction, I also write poetry and nonfiction, like my memoir about depression and nature Something in the Woods Loves You. That book was published by a really cool nature-focused Hachette imprint called Timber Press, and I just finished writing a short nonfiction book about dandelions for them that will be published in 2027. I’m also close to finishing up my fourth poetry collection and I have a new novel well underway. So, yeah, I’m all over the place.

Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?

I’m really looking forward to A Trade of Blood, the third book in the Shadow of the Leviathan series by Robert Jackson Bennett. Plenty of mystery, monsters, and weird nature in those books. And I love a good detective story. I’m also excited about David Baker’s new poetry collection Transit and James Crews’s collection Breathing Room. I recently got an early look at Hannah Fries’s new collection of short, poetic essays called Forest Language and I really can’t wait to grab a finished copy.

Will you be picking up Strange Animals? Tell us in the comments below!