How Do You Spell ___________: An interview with Kayla Oliver

This past December, Hyperreal screened the 2002 documentary classic Spellbound. The film follows eight competitors in the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee. The kids are charming, nerdy, and hilarious. Some of them study relentlessly—often spelling thousands of words a day. Others are shy or seem surprised to be included in the competition at all. One of them even talks like a musical robot. Each of these kids represent different facets of the American Dream, painting a picture of how differences in immigration status, class, race, and geography coalesce to demonstrate what exactly makes America great. 

Before the screening, we held a cinema-themed spelling bee featuring words like: ratatouille, auteur, Inglourious Basterds, Zach Galifianakis, and Blaxploitation. We had a full stage of contestants ready to spell their way to glory (certificates I’d printed out the day before). When I went around asking each contestant to share a spelling related trauma, Kayla Oliver shared that she actually participated in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Obviously, she later went on to win the Hyperreal spelling bee and received an exclusive Gremlins tee. 

I followed up with Kayla afterwards because I had so many questions which she was gracious enough to answer.  

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Tell us a little bit about yourself: what were you like as a child, where did your interest in spelling begin, what are you up to these days?

You'll not be surprised to hear that I was a huge nerd as a kid (and as an adult). I grew up on a cattle ranch outside New Braunfels, and I'm an only child, so books were my main source of entertainment. I didn't have any particular interest in spelling, though, and I'm not sure I even knew what a spelling bee was until one day when my elementary school had everyone come to the library and start spelling words aloud. I won that bee and moved on to regionals, where I placed second one year and first the next, allowing me to compete in the national bee. Spelling bees did not make me popular, but I did win a dictionary as big as my head at regionals and got a free trip to D.C., where I lost early and got to spend the rest of the week being a tourist on Scripps' dime.

Some trivia: I lost at regionals my first year on the word "banquette" (I spelled it "banquet"); I won the next year on "nasopharynx." The only word I remember spelling at Nationals was "zapateado."

Although Hyperreal's pre-screening bee was the first I'd competed in in over twenty years, the language bug has never left me. I majored in English in college before attending law school. I'm now an appellate lawyer and legal-writing teacher at UT, where my students patiently endure my disquisitions on the differences between "discrete" and "discreet" and "continuous" and "continual." I still get excited for the National Spelling Bee every May. And when I was single, I found my spelling bee story to be a useful second-date litmus test. If they responded with "huh?" or "oh, that's… funny," no third date would be had; my now-fiancé responded with, "holy shit, that's so cool."

How did it feel to be in a spelling bee again? Was there a particular word you were proud of spelling correctly? 

I had a blast at the Hyperreal screening! I’m grateful for all the work y’all do to make Hyperreal such a fun and welcoming neighborhood institution. The cinema-themed bee before the screening was so fun, though I'll admit I did feel some old spelling bee nerves start to tingle when I got up on stage. I'm just glad I wasn't asked to spell "Ralph Fiennes" and that my fiancé ended up in second place, not first! 

What did you think of Spellbound?

I bought tickets for the screening expecting it to be a wacky little walk down memory lane. What I didn't expect is that the movie would actually be good! Like, really good! The first half felt like it was taken straight out of a Linklater film. The filmmakers did an excellent job portraying each contestant as an individual, not a stock character, and providing perfectly pitched context about their families and personalities. I highly recommend Spellbound to anyone who likes adorable kids, the late-90s aesthetic, nail-biter competition, or good filmmaking.

As is the case every year at the National Spelling Bee, many of the contestants featured in Spellbound came from immigrant families. Perhaps because I grew up on a Texas ranch, I was particularly moved by the story of the girl from small-town Texas whose dad had been a ranch hand for twenty years since coming to the U.S. without papers, only to see his daughter become one of the nation’s best spellers of a language he still wasn’t confident speaking. Were the same movie made today, that dad would be too afraid to appear on camera, and we’d never get to see him tear up with pride. The most striking and unexpected takeaway I had from the event is that the version of America we see in Spellbound is a warmer, more humane one than we see today.

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