BY VALENTINE SARGENT
Photo Credit: Honorah Tinti
Hannah Tinti, the Chatham MFA Program 2021 Melanie Brown Lecturer, is the author of the bestselling novel The Good Thief, which won The Center for Fiction’s first novel prize, and the story collection Animal Crackers, a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, is a national bestseller and has been optioned for television. She teaches creative writing at New York University’s MFA program and co-founded the Sirenland Writers Conference. Tinti is also the co-founder and executive editor of One Story magazine, which won the AWP Small Press Publisher Award, CLMP’s Firecracker Award, and the PEN/Magid Award for Excellence in Editing.
On January 20th, Hannah Tinti and I discussed journaling, solar flares synonymous to inspiration, and all the tasks Tinti juggles with a sense of ease. Our conversation was held over a virtual call due to the pandemic.
The Fourth River: What was the first story that had a profound impact on you?
Hannah Tinti: It’s hard to say. My mom was a librarian, so books have always been extremely important in my family. It’s hard to think of a first. I was really into Edgar Allan Poe when I was really young, those stories made a huge impact on me and stuck with me. I’d also say Ray Bradbury’s short stories as a kid made a big difference. I think it’s “All Summer in a Day”; that’s the short story that’s about the kids who are on Venus where the sun only comes out once every [seven] years and they lock the girl in the closet so she can’t see the sun. Do you know the one I’m talking about?
TFR: Oh yeah, this sounds very familiar!
HT: Every kid has read it. Every grammar school kid has to read that story, because it’s actually about bullying. It’s actually really good for today. It’s very powerful. It’s very short, too. That one I remember having an effect on me. As any kid does who knows feeling injustice as a child. Which kids don’t quite understand but can feel emotionally. So, I think that was a story I remember that really stuck with me. But yeah, I like the grizzly, Edgar Allan Poe, spooky stuff, because I grew up in Salem, which is where I am now, so Halloween is just in my blood. It’s Halloween 365 days a year here, is what I always say when people ask me “Why do you write creepy things?” and I’m like, “Hey, this is where I grew up, this is my air and water here.”
TFR: I love this strange violence you incorporate in your writing. It pulls you in, right? It’s that similar curiosity of the grotesque that makes you ask, “What’s there?” And I like how you dig into it. I can definitely see that Edgar Allan Poe peeking out.
HT: Yeah, it’s something I’ve always been interested in, which is the line of violence, and what makes some people cross that line and others not cross the line? I was a science major in school, I actually studied biology, so for me nature, animals, all that stuff is a big part of my brain.
TFR: I can definitely see that in your writing, especially Animal Crackers. I’m curious, have you been able to read during this time, and if so, what have you been reading?
HT: I have found it kind of challenging to read books right now. I do a lot of reading. I read all the time because I’m either reading for One Story or I’m reading my students’ work or I’m often a judge for prizes. I just finished reading for this fellowship we just awarded at One Story and we had around 350 applicants who were sending work from all around the world. I’m working on an anthology right now with selected shorts and helping them crawl through all these short stories and put them together in a book that is going to be published next year. So I’m doing a lot of reading for work so when I’m actually taking a break though it’s hard for me. And given the pandemic…I have been more watching television, I will say. In the last eight or nine months I’ve watched more TV – I feel like everybody has though – than I’ve ever watched.
TFR: That makes sense. It gives you that break because it sounds like you are always going, going, going. Especially during this chaotic time you need time to rest.
HT: Yeah, and if I am reading sometimes, I’ll go to my comfort food reading, which is usually classics. So I haven’t really been reading any new books lately. But I’ve been reading a lot of amazing stories and novel excerpts; it’s all stuff that’s unpublished though so it’s hard to talk about it. Because these are all things that are in the works by other people.
Although I will talk a little bit about our new fellow. This is a yearly fellowship we give at One Story that we just announced last week. This is a fellowship that gives to somebody outside of the network of MFA systems, someone who wouldn’t have the opportunity to get an MFA, and whose work relates to bodies of difference. That fellow is a woman named Diana Veiga. She’s a librarian actually in D.C. and she is writing short stories and each story is set in a different part of D.C. She’s giving this really interesting cross section of this place, which is such a weird place. D.C. is so strange…It’s a great collection, I’m really excited. We are going to be working with her and the idea is that she gets a stipend, she gets a year of free classes, and she gets a full manuscript review by me at the end of the year. So it’s really about helping somebody who doesn’t really have the opportunity to go to an MFA program and give them a big boost in their career.
TFR: Oh definitely, because the whole point of an MFA is to make those literary connections. And you basically provide that for these authors.
HT: Yeah, so that’s been really fun and she’s our third fellow. And they are all works that inhabit bodies of difference, so it ends up being a really interesting subject matter that each of these writers has been working on as well. I’m excited to start working with her. We just chose her and announced her last week so that’s some great reading I’ve been doing lately.
TFR: That’s wonderful. And talking about craft, I’m curious, what is your favorite aspect about writing?
HT: I’d say the best part of it is the best part for everyone, which is kind of the mysterious part. There’s the slog where you’re just trying to get your word count in. And then there’s a moment where the slog falls away. I talk about it with my students, but it’s hard to explain. There’s a spark that happens in your brain and you feel a surge of excitement, you know? One way I sometimes talk about it with my students is there’s almost like this long wall that you’re walking along, like the Great Wall of China, you’re walking along this wall and that wall separates your conscious and unconscious mind. And every once in a while, you find a door and when you open that door it’s like sparks and wildfire goes back and forth between those two places. I call them solar flares, like this flare coming out from the side, and then the door slams and you’re like “Oh no” and then it goes away. Then you are trudging along the wall again for a while, but that moment that happens – and it’s very hard to put your finger on exactly what it is. I can’t say oh, it’s editing or oh, it’s first drafts, or something like that. For me, I guess I would say my favorite part are the solar flares.
I think it is something about a connection in your unconscious and conscious mind when that happens, because you feel that surge of excitement, and that surge of excitement is you are able to somehow put into words something that is normally not able to be put into words. You are accessing some emotional truth that you know in your body is true, and that’s what makes you so excited right? Because you are able to actually take something that is usually floating around back here [in the brain] and actually putting it out. You feel that truth in it.
I think what’s exciting for me as an editor is when I’m reading someone else’s work and I can see the flare on the page. I can see where it flared for the author…When you’re reading somebody’s work and there’s a moment like wow, like you almost feel an emotional response to something on the page. Like maybe you get chocked up, or someone writes an image and you can really see the image in your mind and its very very clear, then they’ve usually had a flare there.
TFR: I’ve read in other interviews that you keep a journal for your daily observations.
HT: I do, yeah.
TFR: What led you to start journaling and putting it into a creative practice?
HT: That all started when I met and worked with Lynda Barry… I had journaled before and usually I would most often journal whenever I travelled. I’d take a book with me and write down things and remember things. And I would mainly make lists of things. The lists really help me, because I found that when I would try to write in a diary or like writing a letter, or confessing, as if someone else was going to read it someday, that didn’t work for me… But what Lynda does, her technique – which you can find online – she does this thing called the five-minute diary…And what it is, is taking a page and you cut it into fourths. You write seven things you did that day – this is supposed to be very fast, the very first seven things that come up from your subconscious mind… Then the other is seven things you noticed or saw. Noticing is different, like I noticed an onion skin on the floor from when I was cooking last night or dust on this window, I noticed the sound of something. Or I noticed I was feeling this way today…it’s more vague or emotional that place. And then the other two things you write is you write one thing that you heard like something someone said or a sound, and the last thing is you draw a picture – a doodle, is what she says.
So those four things, and again you’re supposed to do it very quickly, it usually takes me about five to ten minutes. What’s surprising is it has really created this amazing resource for me to go back and almost grab memories from certain parts of my life and go back and use them.
TFR: In all three of your books, you have this amazing ability to set the scene with your imagery. What is your process? Do you ever draw out scenes before you write them?
HT: Well first off, thanks, that’s very nice of you to say. You start with an image, something you saw or something that’s in your mind that you don’t know why it’s sticking in your mind…For [Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley] I was approaching it with, “What do I want to write about?” And I thought “Oh, I’ll write about the greasy pole.” Because the greasy pole is a real thing, it’s a real event that happens every year in Gloucester, Massachusetts…The greasy pole happens at a festival every year and it’s the same thing like I describe. There’s this crazy pole, about the length of a telephone pole, over this pier that you grease with lard. It’s actually crazier in person…on the first round they all wear costumes which is so weird that I couldn’t even put it in the book. No one’s going to believe those fishermen dress up like chickens and Wonder Woman on the first round. And they are all so drunk. Like really, really wasted. And everyone comes out to watch. And it’s also very macho, like gladiator-feel, they are all stripped down and covered in grease. And they really injure themselves.
So I was just writing about that, exploring it, and I thought about let me focus on one man, let me describe his body, and trying to describe his body I realized he had these scars, “Well what are these scars?” I looked closer and I was like, “Oh wow, they’re bullet holes.” It made me start realizing about scars and how there’s a story behind every scar on your body. Those stories get told when we are in bed with somebody, or they get told to our doctors – people who we are really intimate with.
So my surface level was, oh I like the greasy pole and now I’m already at the storytelling and the scars and the secrets we hold on our bodies.
That’s when I started thinking about how would I write a book that is only those stories? That the only thing you got about somebody’s life was scar stories and you didn’t get anything else? So what I was interested in that book was this idea of what’s hidden?
TFR: Speaking of characters, specifically in Animal Crackers, there are a lot of characters who find themselves in difficult situations whether it be in an affair, dealing with an illness in the family, or changing their career. What inspired you to create this cast of imperfect characters with baggage?
HT: [Laughs] I guess my own baggage! For me, that’s what’s interesting. Kurt Vonnegut has this quote that’s like, “Terrible things happen to your characters so your readers can see what they are made of.”
TFR: In your collection of stories and in your two novels, all your characters have these profound relationships that impact who they are, you often focus on the parent and child relationship. What draws you to this particular bond?
HT: What’s funny about [Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley] is I started it meaning to write a love story and I didn’t think it would end up being a parent child thing, but it ended up being a parent child thing. There’s still the love story as well, there’s two love stories really. But the main thing being this parent child thing and I think it’s our parents end up having a greater effect on us than we think they do…I think one of the reasons I keep going back to this parent child thing is because I think that’s really interesting, what’s told and what’s not told. And you just have a longer relationship with them than you even do with your romantic partner, like that’s a shorter window in terms of time. With parents it’s many, many more years. Many, many more complicated layers to get into. They end up being really profound relationships, which often times aren’t explored in books, it’s more romantic relationships.
TFR: In your two novels both main characters are scarred physically whether with bullet holes or the loss of a hand. And in Animal Crackers some stories like “How to Revitalize the Snake in Your Life” and “Slim’s Last Ride” focus a lot on the physicality of the body. There seems to be this theme of what the body, any body, can tolerate. I’m curious to know more about your fascination with the physical body.
HT: There’s a book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. His thing is about how we hold memory in our physical bodies. That’s so interesting to me. That makes the solar flares go off.
There’s a great story that I tell to my students. That I also got from Lynda Barry, I’m just going to keep giving her credit. She tells this story about his guy with phantom limb syndrome…This was a guy who had lost his arm in an accident, but he was feeling an enormous amount of pain. He felt like he was basically clenching his fist so tightly, even though the fist was no longer there, so tightly that he was in incredible physical pain. He saw all these doctors, neuroscientists, got addicted to drugs, tried to kill himself, all because of what he was feeling in this hand that didn’t exist. There was this doctor, V.S. Ramachandran, he’s one of these big scientists that is treating phantom limb syndrome. He met with the guy and is treating him and designed this mirrored box. So this is a box with mirrors on all sides…He had the guy stand in front of the box and put his left hand in the box so when he looked down he got a visual of both hands. So it looked like he had his right hand. The doctor had him clench his fists, so it looked like he had two fists. And then the doctor said, “Now unclench your fists.” And the guy opened his left hand, which made it look like his right hand opened and the pain immediately stopped… [The doctor] cured him with an image.
All the things that have happened to us in our lives are like our own phantom limbs. The process of creating art or creating our writing is that we are making the mirrored box that tricks our minds into healing those phantom limbs. It’s about how important and powerful an image can be. An image can heal, an image can shift things, an image can deal with past trauma. But you need to create the image. That’s something I think is really powerful and interesting to think about and in particular, why I’m interested in the body in that way. And plus I’ve got that background in science so that’s always been something I’ve been curious about to begin with, about how things physically work and how they connect.
TFR: In a time with so much division, do you think written stories have the power to connect us to one another?
HT: Definitely. That’s why I do One Story, I think that’s one of the reasons why I started that magazine…The main thing is every year we get these amazing letters and notes from our readers where people are saying, “Wow that story really had an effect on me” or “That’s exactly what happened to me, it made me feel understood.” While I definitely think readership has gone down, like not many people are reading…there’s a lot of other ways stories are being presented in the world, so the plain written word feels like not many people are reading, that said, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. All you need is the one reader. All you need is that one person. All you need is for someone to read something and it has an effect on them. That it makes them feel more understood and less alone. That’s what we’re trying to do if we’re the writer. And if we’re lucky we find a couple readers that read our stuff and feel the same way and that’s success.