Kaitlin Oster
Bio
Professional writer.
MFA Screenwriting - David Lynch School of Cinematic Arts
Website: kaitlinoster.com
Writing collaboration or work, speaking engagements, interviews - [email protected]
Achievements (7)
Stories (37)
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The Unwilling Resistance. Honorable Mention in Through the Keyhole Challenge. Top Story - November 2025.
I fell to my knees as if revisiting the pews from my Catholic childhood and closed my left eye in order to gaze through the ancient keyhole of a door that separated me from certain doom and uncertain, possible doom. Astigmatism be damned; I’d have rather risked losing an eye than spend another second in that god forsaken place. I had enough experience genuflecting in my youth to afford me kneecaps of steel—and for good reason too—because I couldn’t tell if I was perched on top of shrapnel or shards of bone. The warzone expanded westward and while none of us expected it, we also couldn’t hold a candle to any false promises that came from the militant leaders. And how could we? They sat cozy and confined in their well-lit fortresses and I—along with a few hundred poor bastards—sat without so much as a glimmer of light, or hope.
By Kaitlin Oster2 months ago in Fiction
Be Careful What You Wish For
When Dave Blanchard sat in the Blue Ridge Comfort Inn—a weathered but accommodating establishment that boasted both sterility and staleness—he underestimated just how much he would miss the luxury of commercial down-alternative pillows and hot water. He used the hotel computer to finalize his plans of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, and scheduled for a taxi to take him from the hotel to the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, the last time he’d experience another human being for four to five months.
By Kaitlin Oster5 months ago in Fiction
Leave the Light On. Runner-Up in Leave the Light On Challenge. Top Story - August 2025. Content Warning.
“You have a visitor.” The facilitator stood in front of two heavy velvet curtains that gathered in bunches on the floor. He was almost as tall as the curtains were high, and he stood with such stillness that it appeared to the mystic that this man could have simply evaporated into the deep red abyss that hung behind him. His suit was Italian and tailored to his body with precision; something to be expected by the governing forces of this establishment. While the room these two briefly shared was intimately-sized—not uncommon in this profession—the mystic could never clearly make out the face of her facilitator. Either the lights were too low, or he was too corrupted. Probably the latter, she figured. She was never able to read the facilitators. Good enough for them.
By Kaitlin Oster5 months ago in Fiction
Stay with me
I mean, growing up, I always had this innate fear I would lose my mother, a stubborn German who loved hard and disliked herself even harder. Some days, in the years following her death, I blamed myself, thinking my fears materialized and led to losing her. I spent 20 years witnessing her self-destruct, and eventually that became the norm; I simply accepted the inevitability of things, losing her emotionally long before she died. As I got older I began to ask myself, could I have tried harder? I would find old photos of her where she stared into the lens, and tried to make eye contact with the past in an attempt to understand what year the light escaped her and addiction stepped in with a futile flame. I searched for her pain before me - for validation that I didn’t cause her to lose hope in herself.
By Kaitlin Oster2 years ago in Chapters
Cycle
“All that was, still shall be.” Death drove her open hand into a rotting log and watched the wood fall away in a heap of ash. She produced a closed fist that, once opened, revealed an acorn. Death made a notch in the ash pile and tenderly tucked the acorn away before continuing through the woods.
By Kaitlin Oster3 years ago in Fiction
Little Kingdom
The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. Margot lay on her bed, as always, and gazed out to the world of trees that leaned and pitched crooked and forlorn, often without leaves. She couldn’t remember life before Frank’s care, and when he took her in she was otherwise unwanted, as he put it. Only little snippets of Margot’s origin came from him, and only when he was ready to share. Whether the truth was too painful for his own heart, or that he didn’t want to overwhelm her with details, she didn’t know. When Margot was young she’d beg for tales of her childhood, but even her pleading eyes were met with resistance.
By Kaitlin Oster3 years ago in Fiction
