Sarah Hall
Sarah Hall
deeply divided positive rather referendum scotland
It's very interesting to me that the nationalist movement in Scotland has become so positive and self-reflective rather than anti-English. The referendum in 2014 was peaceful, for all its deeply and passionately divided people.
You can't see all of a place until you look at it from a distance.
harder metaphors readily work
Language description and metaphors seem readily available. The things I have to work harder at are plot, pacing, and form.
james novelists sell souls
James Salter has talents on the page we novelists would sell souls to the devil for.
happened history interested radical women
I've always been interested in the history of radical feminism - what happened to those women of the 1960s and '70s.
I'm a home-roamer and can't do study or office scenarios.
five four hours mornings
I write in the mornings or afternoons - I'm not a night owl and can write for only four or five hours maximum.
science
I was useless at science. I was never going to be an astrophysicist.
saw women
I was brought up in Cumbria where I saw all these fierce agricultural women.
bbc card looked painter portraits terrible
I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown.
house kitchen wander
I wander around the house and write in bed, at the kitchen table, by the window, in the yard.
immensely later life won
I used to dislike bookshops immensely as a child and was won over only later in life.
human
I think you can tell any human story in a particular place.
northwest pacific school virginia
I married an American. He was from the Pacific Northwest but went to law school in the South, so I was living in Virginia and North Carolina.