Erica Wright

Erica Wright's new novel Hollow Bones, a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, is out now! Her essay collection Snake was released as part of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series. Her mystery Famous in Cedarville received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was called "a clever little whodunnit" in The New York Times Book Review. She is the author of five other books, including the poetry collections Instructions for Killing the Jackal and All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned. Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Denver Quarterly, New Orleans Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Wright was the senior poetry editor at Guernica Magazine for more than a decade and currently teaches at Bellevue University. She holds degrees from New York University and Columbia University. She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with her family.

From my Q&A with Wright:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Hollow Bones is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, and the title comes from the line “…thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast of thee.” It is a condemnation—the villain’s absence of faith has lead to an absence of character—but the phrase “hollow bones” also references birds. And a bird is a perfect symbol for the book’s protagonist Essa who is slight and fragile but determined. While not what Matthea Harvey might call a license plate title, grounded in information, I do think Hollow Bones establishes an appropriately gothic tone.

What's in a name?

This story is told in three POVs, and I decided to give Juliet the same name in my version that she has in the Shakespeare play. In Measure for Measure, she only has seven lines, so I was starting from scratch in some ways. Of all the characters in the play, she’s most affected by the events but given least attention. Her fiancé Claudio has been sentenced to die for impregnating her, and she’s sent off to what sounds an awful lot like prison. In Hollow Bones, she’s also in tough circumstances. Her fiancé has been arrested for burning down a church and killing two people inside. Instead of wallowing, though, she tries to control her own fate, not relying on the whims or rules of others.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

Honestly? Not too surprised. I was introduced to Measure for Measure as a teenager when I attended the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery. I was captivated by Isabella and her plight. I even had her first speech on mercy memorized, but please don’t ask me to recite it today!

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

In general, I find endings more difficult to write. With a mystery, I want all the pieces to click together, and sometimes those pieces are misshapen or broken on a first—or fifth—draft. For this book, though, I wrote and rewrote and rewrote the first chapter. The final version of Hollow Bones is only 70,000 words but I wrote at least 100,000 during the drafting process.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Like Essa, I grew up in small town, and while most aspects of my childhood were happy ones, I longed for privacy. I never had any important secrets to hide from my neighbors, but I never liked them knowing even my unimportant ones. Essa wants to start over somewhere where she won’t be known as “the serpent orphan,” and who could blame her? Personality-wise, we’re worlds apart. I like to think that we could be friends, though.

Visit Erica Wright's website.

My Book, The Movie: Famous in Cedarville.

The Page 99 Test: Snake.

--Marshal Zeringue