JENNIFER HAIGH

Growing up, I didn't know anybody who didn't have a miner in the family. Both of my grandfathers were miners.

Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.

The human heart: its expansions and contractions its electrics and hydraulics the warm tides that move and fill it. For years Art had studied it from a safe distance from many perspectives...he listened in fascination and revulsion, in envy and pity. He dispensed canned wisdom, a little scripture. He sent them on their way with a prayer.

The story of my family. . .changes with the teller.

I wanted only a familiar voice, someone who knew me. Not some earlier, larval version of myself. . .

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.

That renunciation of human closeness, of our deepest instincts: is it, in the end, simply too much to ask? Good men-sound, healthy men-can't make the sacrifice, or don't want to; has Holy Mother settled for the unsound and unhealthy? Has the Church, ever pragmatic, made do with what is left?

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.

I have written my whole life. I remember writing as a small child.

'Baker Towers' is the book I've always known I would write, but it wasn't an easy book to do.

I spent some time, six months or so, ruminating about the characters before I sat down to write 'Faith'.

I have written my whole life. I remember writing as a small child.

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.

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.

I've always felt that writing can be learned but not really taught. The best thing somebody can do for you is to put the right book in your hands at the right time. I grew up in a family where the right book was always being put in my hands.

Growing up, I didn't know anybody who didn't have a miner in the family. Both of my grandfathers were miners.

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.

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.

I was raised in a Catholic family, spent twelve years in parochial schools, and had extremely fond memories of my interactions with Catholic clergy.

'Baker Towers' is the book I've always known I would write, but it wasn't an easy book to do.

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.

Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.

The human heart: its expansions and contractions its electrics and hydraulics the warm tides that move and fill it. For years Art had studied it from a safe distance from many perspectives...he listened in fascination and revulsion, in envy and pity. He dispensed canned wisdom, a little scripture. He sent them on their way with a prayer.

The story of my family. . .changes with the teller.

That renunciation of human closeness, of our deepest instincts: is it, in the end, simply too much to ask? Good men-sound, healthy men-can't make the sacrifice, or don't want to; has Holy Mother settled for the unsound and unhealthy? Has the Church, ever pragmatic, made do with what is left?

I wanted only a familiar voice, someone who knew me. Not some earlier, larval version of myself. . .

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.