Sadie Hoagland
Author Interview - Sadie Hoagland
Author of Strange Children
In a polygamist commune in the desert, a fourteen-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl fall in love and consummate that love, breaking religious law. They are caught, and a year later, she gives birth to his father’s child while the boy commits murder four hundred miles away—a crime that will slowly unravel the community.
Author Interview - Sadie Hoagland
Author I draw inspiration from: Toni Morrison. I've always loved her work, but watching the documentary about her and realizing that she wrote many of her books while working fulltime as an editor AND being a single mother to two young boys, that is (insert expletive here) amazing. Besides that superhuman aspect of her biography, I think in many ways she taught me what writing could do, what a novel could do. That you could keep the reader reading not by teasing them with what is going to happen next, but with the exquisite beauty of sentences. There is a fearlessness in her work that gives me the chills, and it's hard not to feel inspired by that.
Author Interview - Sadie Hoagland
Favorite place to read a book: Cuddled in bed, with my daughter. But as a working mother and writer I often read waiting for ballet class to end or with kids yelling in the background; I have learned to tune out pretty much anything if it means getting to the end of a good book!
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Quentin Compson from Absalom, Absalom, because he would certainly have plenty of stories to tell to kill the time. Side note: this question has really made realize I love a lot of books with characters I wouldn't want to be anywhere near (Lolita, The Stranger, Madame Bovary, I could go on).
Author Interview - Sadie Hoagland
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: I was driving across North Dakota in winter after I graduated from college. I had taken every writing class offered in college but had majored in psychology. There was an eerie, uber whiteness in the landscape, in the snow, sky, and even road. It was like being folded in paper. I begin thinking about a story, which I eventually wrote and which wasn't very good, but that drive, that blank-page landscape let me also imagine myself and my life as a writer.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: Ohhh, paperback please. I love hardcover too, but prefer the portability of something I can toss in a purse or beach bag.
The last book I read: Martin Buber's, I and Thou, for a class I'm teaching on the intersections of identity and writing. The last "fun" book I read was Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn, which is a beautiful little book.
Author Interview - Sadie Hoagland
Pen & paper or computer: Computer, though by the time I sit down I've already done a lot of "writing" in my head, on walks, falling asleep. So when I open my laptop and face that blank page I generally know where I'm headed.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: As a child, I definitely would have said Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, her tomboyishness was right up my alley. As an adult, Veronica from Mary Gaitskill's Veronica; I could use a brassy older friend that's been around the block.
Author Interview - Sadie Hoagland
If I wasn’t an author, I’d be a: writer at fortune cookie company, or the person in charge of naming nail polish colors or crayons.
Favorite decade in fashion history: Probably the early sixties; I would happily wear any of Holly's casual outfits in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Capris, flats, ridiculously large boatnecks and sunglasses and mod makeup are all right up my alley.
Author Interview - Sadie Hoagland
Place I’d most like to travel: Africa. I'd love to see lions and giraffes and Cape Town. I had plans to go in college, but political unrest in the region I was set to visit delayed the trip and I still haven't gotten there.
My signature drink: Gingerade Kombucha. It replaced an evening glass of wine for me a few years back, and it's been a good change. Though I do still like a good glass of wine now and then.
Favorite artist: I love James Rosenquist, his bright paintings seem so emblematic of America to me, in all its history and obsessions. I also love Kara Walker, for the same reasons. Though the experience of looking at each one is wildly different.
Number one on my bucket list: Take voice lessons so I can sing Happy Birthday without embarrassing myself!
Anything else you'd like to add: My favorite time to write is in the morning, my favorite place is a kitchen table next to a cup of coffee, and my favorite writing outfit is sweatpants and a t-shirt.
Find more from Sadie :
Facebook: Sadie Hoagland
twitter: @sadiehoagland
my website, sadiehoagland.com
Bio: Sadie Hoagland is the author of American Grief in Four Stages, a collection of stories that the explore the inability of our culture to communicate grief, or sympathy, outside of cliché. Her novel, Strange Children, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. She has a PhD in fiction from the University of Utah and an MA in Creative Writing/Fiction from UC Davis. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Alice Blue Review, The Black Herald, Mikrokosmos Journal, South Dakota Review, Sakura Review, Grist Journal, Oyez Review, Passages North, Five Points, The Fabulist, South Carolina Review and elsewhere. She is a former editor of Quarterly West, and currently teaches fiction at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where she also lives with her family, and they do their best to eat beignets whenever they can. You can visit Sadie online at sadiehoagland.com.
Author Interview - Sadie Hoagland
