Essay on LitHub—When America Turns on its Hyphenated Citizens, Michelle Hoover on Early 20th Century Anti-German Hysteria "In many of the story’s versions, the Tower of Babel didn’t fall. It remained for centuries of chaos and war, always reaching to the heavens though never quite making it. If the story were true, I’d doubt different languages were what drove the builders apart. Instead, it was hubris, pride, suspicion of the other. And yet, we retain that need to make a name for ourselves, in both structures and stories.'" March 2016
Essay on Electric Literature—10 Great Novels of the Rural, A Reading List by Michelle Hoover, author of Bottomland "After reading my work, he told me, 'Your characters, it is as if they live beneath the land.'" March 2016
Interview on Dead Darlings—An interview with Dawn Tripp, author of Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe "I think when you are a female artist or writer, your work is almost always seen and interpreted through a gendered lens. Our culture is grounded in white privilege, specifically white male privilege. That is simply the default lens." February 2016
Essay on LitHub—Remembering the Storyteller of Damascus, Before the War: Michelle Hoover, in a Syria that Once Was: "The Syria I knew is disappearing. I want to try to tell you what I saw." February 2016
Interview on Dead Darlings—An Interview with Alexander Chee, Author of The Queen of the Night: "Storytellers definitely belong to their communities — are of them. But fiction writers, while keeping rooted in that tradition, are meant to belong to our ideas more." February 2016
Interview on Dead Darlings—An Interview with Lauren Groff, Author of Fates & Furies: "I sometimes think that writing is a matter of understanding your own massive flaws and coming up with ways to trick yourself past them. I would, if I could, spend three weeks on a single sentence. I love the tiny crafting of sentences, the careful and meticulous building, and if I had my druthers, I would only play with sentences all day. But that’s a very difficult way to write a book." October 2015
Article at GrubStreet—Within Spitting Distance: William Giraldi, Alix Ohlin, and The Book of the Damned: "In the past, I’ve found the ability of my fellow writers to maim others with a flick of a pen rather uplifting—particularly after a bad breakup or in light of stupid reviews of my own work. But this time, I could only think: Oh, Billy, what did you do now?" August 2012
Essay in Colorado Review—Our Little Bertha: "The light in the doorway, the long unfinished homecoming, the old men on their haunches and the smell of manure in the wind, the smell of the inside of my hand . . . Everything is muted in this place—even the beginning. Iowa: A slow grinding of continents and now the soil is merely the remains of glacial drift, a lucky convergence of minerals and terrain. Still, I wonder how this place came into existence." September 2011
