Hilary Hauck
Hilary Hauck is the author of From Ashes to Song, her debut novel. A writer and translator, her work has appeared in the Mindful Writers Retreat Series anthologies, the Ekphrastic Review, Balloons Lit. Journal, and the Telepoem Booth. She moved to Italy from her native UK as a young adult, where she mastered the language, learned how to cook food she can no longer eat, and won a karate championship. After meeting her husband, Hilary came to the US and drew inspiration from Pennsylvania coal history, which soon became the setting for her debut novel. Hilary is Chair of the Festival of Books in the Alleghenies, past president of Pennwriters, and a graduate of RULE. She lives on a small patch of woods in rural Pennsylvania with her husband, one of their three adult children, a cat with a passion for laundry, and an oversized German Shepherd called Hobbes—of the Calvin variety.
Twitter: @HilaryHauck
Instagram: @hilary_hauck
Is there a genre of music that influences your writing/thinking? Do you listen to music while you write?
When I’m writing, I listen to classical or instrumental music because lyrics can be distracting. When it’s time to get up from the chair, I put on a different playlist with a mixture of energizing Latin music, artists like Shakira, Luis Fonsi, Enrico Inglesias, and emotional Italian classics, Lucio Dalla, Lucio Battisti, Claudio Baglioni. As long as nobody else is home, I sing (terribly) and dance (flailingly) and shake away any stiffness from sitting still at my desk.
Is your go to comfort food sweet or savory? Is it something you make yourself? Does food inspire your writing?
My favorite food group is vegetables, and my ultimate comfort foods are guacamole and roasted vegetables (not necessarily together). I love to cook, more so in the summer when I get fresh produce from my CSA.
I learned all my best cooking when I lived in Italy. When I moved to the US, I discovered an entirely different way of cooking Italian food, dishes I’d never heard of, like pasta Alfredo. As I researched the history of immigration to the US, I also learned about the evolution of ethnic food and now consider Italo-American a cuisine in its own right. Food hasn’t been a main theme of my writing, but it certainly does make a guest appearance. In From Ashes to Song, newly arrived Assunta is invited to dinner at second generation Mrs. Conati’s house, and she can’t fathom why the meatballs are going on the spaghetti. Later in the story, when she’s been in the US for some years, she has accepted the dish, a bit like I have.
Have you ever experienced Imposter Syndrome?
For sure! In my early writing days, I went to a book signing at a local college and tried to tell the author I was writing a book. It came out as a stuttered, whimpered, cringe-worthy mutter. What was it so hard to say I was writing a book? It made no sense, I wasn’t telling her I’d written the next bestseller or my book was as good as her book. It was just a simple statement yet one of the hardest things I’ve ever said. But it reflected the crippling way I felt on the inside. It took a lot of time to get over it.
It helped to immerse myself in the writing community. I found community through Pennwriters, read books and took writing classes—I still do, but I also teach classes now. Ultimately, I realized that I was the only one paying the consequences—nobody else was berating me for having this urgent need to write. I don’t think imposter syndrome ever goes away entirely, but I’d say I control it now, instead of it controlling me. The best reason to get over it is that once it’s out of the way, you can focus on what you want to really do, which is writing.
Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing? Do you sew? Paint? Draw? Knit? Dance?
My other artistic outlet is photography. My favorite kind of photography is macro because it allows me to get very close to the subject and discover fine details of things my eyes can’t see. It’s astonishing to see how much life is going on all the time without us noticing. It puts life in perspective—we’re just a part of a whole great big universe.
I particularly love taking flowers and insects. I like to make it feel almost like you’re inside the flower. The outdoors is a wonderful place to explore close up - luckily I live at the end of a dirt road in the woods so I can lay down on the ground or climb up a ladder without worrying my neighbors too much!
Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?
I lived in Italy for over a decade so I speak Italian fluently. This is perhaps the biggest source of influence on my writing. I grew up in the UK, I now live in the US, and Italy was home in between, so I have no idea what it feels like to live in the same country, let alone the same town. It seems natural for my characters, also, to explore life through the lens of experiencing new cultures. The most important thing travel has taught me is that there’s always a different perspective, there is no one overriding truth but many layers of context, culture, history—all of which is encapsulated in language—and being able to bring that to the page and show readers a new perspective is the most powerful aspect of fiction.
