Tennessee Hill

Tennessee Hill holds an MFA from North Carolina State University. Her work has been featured in Poetry magazine, Best New Poets, Southern Humanities Review, Adroit Journal, Arkansas International, and elsewhere. She is a native of South Texas, where she still lives and teaches with her husband and their dog.

Hill's new novel is Girls with Long Shadows.

My Q&A with the author:

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

I went back and forth with this title quite a lot and ultimately landed on Girls with Long Shadows because I think it introduces a sense of foreboding that is important to the tone. I love that “Girls” is in the title, too, because it highlights the tension between the way the sisters want to be seen and the way they are actually perceived by their community.

What's in a name?

Names are so important, not just to characters but to people and places and things. Having the sisters named Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C was the first big decision I made when I was writing, and I molded a lot of the plot to support this choice, to avoid it feeling lazy or reductive.

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

I’m not sure. I’d love to ask her! I think she’d be very proud.

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

Definitely endings, but more than either of these, middles! Writing, for me, feels like a long run, where you have so much energy and optimism at the start but by the middle and end, you’re tired and kind of lost and just want the journey to wrap up somewhere restful. This being my debut novel, I feel like I changed every part of it drastically. The spirit of the original idea is captured most purely in the beginning.

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

I think there are certainly bits of myself in many of the characters, but I try to stay away from any inclinations towards auto-fiction. Girlhood and southern-ness and family are deeply important to me, so I feel connected to the characters through those larger thematic vessels.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music, certainly. Nature, too. I think my writing is just an attempt to combine and harness those two experiences; being out in the world in a lyrical way. Right now, I’m listening to so much Bon Iver, HAIM, and Glen Campbell. In general, I make an effort to let all of the beautiful things in the world rub off on me.

Visit Tennessee Hill's website.

--Marshal Zeringue