In the Spotlight: A Q&A With Hadley Moore

Autumn House has loved seeing Hadley Moore receive well-deserved recognition for her work as of late. Her debut short story collection Not Dead Yet and Other Stories was longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, won the Eric Hoffer category prize for short story/anthology and was on the shortlist for the grand prize, and was on the shortlist the Rubery Book Award in short stories. In this Q&A with Laurie Marshall, Hadley shares what her experience has been like coming to writing late, receiving praise, finding community, and what her writing process is like. Here’s a sample of their conversation:

The stories in Not Dead Yet don’t hesitate to spotlight uncomfortable thoughts and behaviors, and then kind of spend time picking at the scab around them, just for good measure. How did you find your way to that kind of storytelling?

I feel relieved by honesty and truth-telling. And, well, sometimes life is scabby and we humans pick at our scabs. It’s not usually healthy or productive, but we do it. And I have compassion for my characters while they’re engaging in self-destruction. I’m not after violence or abuse or addiction or grief for its own sake; I’m not after prurience. I think that being clear-eyed about the full picture of our humanity makes for good fiction, and it’s definitely an element I look for in my reading life as well.

Many thanks to Laurie Marshall for taking the time to get to know Hadley and her work better and for sharing this conversation with us. Read the full Q&A here.