Catherine Wallace Hope
Award-winner Catherine Wallace Hope is the author of Once Again: A Novel, a speculative thriller from Alcove Press releasing on 10/06/2020. She earned her degree in creative writing at the University of Colorado and delved into dance in New York and art and psychology in California. When she returned to Colorado, she became an instructor at the renowned Lighthouse Writers Workshop, offering creativity workshops for writers. Currently, she and her family are living on an island in the Pacific Northwest where they serve at the pleasure of two astonishingly spoiled dogs.
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Favorite non-reading activity?
Both my husband and I love it when we are taken for our HIIT walks by our dogs, Roscoe and Kiko. Roscoe, in particular, likes to drag me from tree to bush to sign to post so he can familiarize himself with every one of his peers who has ever passed those spots. He then diligently marks each place as a memorable destination in his canine travels. These walks also give me a chance to get away from my computer, which is when I get many of my most elusive, hard-to-remember ideas.
What period of history do you wish you knew more about?
It’s not a period of history yet, but when it is, I will have wished now that I could know more about it before it gets here: I do wish I could get some reliable predictions about our future. As a woman, I would not have wanted to live in any time before this one. All that nonsense of being subsumed into the identity of your husband and not owning your own property or being permitted to vote—no thank you. But I would love to know that, together, we’re going to evolve as quickly as we need to if we’re going to solve the worst of our problems. Will we build just societies? Will our behaviors advance as quickly as our technology? Will we preserve the paradise we were born into? Will there still be coffee? I would really appreciate some reassurance around these issues.
What’s your favorite comic strip or graphic novel?
I think Gary Larson is hilarious, and I hear he’s coming back just when we most need a good laugh.
Is there a genre of music that influences your writing/thinking? Do you listen to music while you write?
I love film music. When I write, I can’t play anything with lyrics because I need to listen only for the words in my head, but film music is so evocative. It’s just genius for tone and cadence, and it’s also a great cure for writer’s block/emptiness. It can really open up fresh avenues of inspiration.
Is there another profession you’d like to try?
I’d like to try my hand at a job as a wealthy, young heiress who inherits a lush, tropical resort that sits on a silver beach at the rim of a calm, turquoise sea inhabited by mysterious and rare marine species and where opal-encrusted shells wash up on the sand and cool winds lure great cultural luminaries to escape the heated and bitter grime of the city so they can recuperate in sublime sunsets and drink rum punch and dance late into the night, and as the proprietor, it would be my job to drink and dance too and listen to all of their stories. I think I’d be good at that.
