Jennifer Haigh
Jennifer Haigh
Jennifer Haigh is an American novelist and short story writer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
learned performing structure
As a young writer, I learned a lot about grammatical structure from reading plays, from performing the plays. I think that was a wonderful apprenticeship.
draw life none
Like all writers, I draw from life as I know it; but it's a refracted kind of reality, and none of it is factually true.
discovered felt knew quickly though
I believed, after writing 'Mrs. Kimble,' that I knew how to write a novel. I quickly discovered that I only knew how to write that novel. 'Baker Towers' was a different beast entirely; and I felt as though I had to learn to write all over again.
life remember small written
I have written my whole life. I remember writing as a small child.
characters faith months six spent time
I spent some time, six months or so, ruminating about the characters before I sat down to write 'Faith'.
extremely family fond parochial raised spent twelve
I was raised in a Catholic family, spent twelve years in parochial schools, and had extremely fond memories of my interactions with Catholic clergy.
known
'Baker Towers' is the book I've always known I would write, but it wasn't an easy book to do.
alice common james remind richard william
William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place.
stories my-family
The story of my family. . .changes with the teller.
loyalty powerful fog
It was a lesson most people learned much earlier; that even friendship could have an undisclosed shelf life. That loyalty and affection, so consuming and powerful, could dissipate like fog.
voice familiar wanted
I wanted only a familiar voice, someone who knew me. Not some earlier, larval version of myself. . .
reading writing practice
Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.
scare similar ways
Working in a prison, is, to my mind, similar in ways to working in a coal mine. It's going to scare away a lot of people.