10 Questions for Kathleen Hawes
- By Edward Clifford
Last year a lonely possum crept into my bed. This possum has problems: booze, Benzos, Oxy, you name it. He'll snort, smoke, or pop pretty much anything. He can't pay his rent, but he's good in the sack. At night he tickles the inside of my thighs with his whiskers till I just can't take it, then I have to pull him up close. His tail is bald and skinny. His teeth are pointed, widely spaced.
—from "Opossum Problems," Volume 61, Issue 3 (Fall 2020)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
English class, freshman year of high school, I made an abysmal attempt at poetry. There was an allusion to sex in one line, something about “tangled sheets” (ugh). During the next parent-teacher night, all the students’ poems were hung on the classroom walls… except for mine. Mr. McCarthy said my poem contained “inappropriate subject matter.” Honestly, I can’t think of any subject matter more appropriate to evoke the teenage mindset. I’ve been trying to mess with the Mr. McCarthys of the world ever since.
What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Format and narrative style, I rip hard off Junot Dìaz and Susan Orlean. Content and inspiration, I take cues from the hideously dark mind of Flannery O'Connor: “Good Country People,” “Enoch and the Gorilla,” “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” For an author whose fiction often demonstrates a waning faith in humanity, O'Connor writes an uplifting essay called “The Nature and Aim of Fiction” that I come back to in times of writerly crisis. It’s narrated with enough snarky Flannery edge that I don’t feel I’m reading an instruction manual, or worse, self-help literature. In reality, the essay is instructive, it is philosophical, and it does help me; mainly, to trust that my own observations of the world, however small or disconnected they appear, are working towards something big. It makes the solitary act of writing a lot less lonely.
What other professions have you worked in?
Maid, bartender, cocktail waitress…to name a few. There was a short stint when I edited an erotica novel. Margin notes were fun: On p. 22, Lucy pulls her “wet panties down to her knees” but on p. 21, the panties are already at her ankles. How can this be? Eventually I had to quit because the male author of the book refused to bend on his use of the word “globes.” I told the guy to get a thesaurus.
What did you want to be when you were young?
One of The Pointer Sisters or a Victoria’s Secret model. Sadly, genetics were not on my side.
What inspired you to write this piece?
Initially, I fancied myself writing a very smart anthropomorphic allegory about the way American society deals with drug addiction; stigmatizing, incarcerating, “exterminating” addicts. Then I changed my mind and decided I was writing a gritty feminist commentary. Later, I realized neither myself nor my story were that complex. I had been dealing with my own possum problems during this period. Yes, my particular possum was an addict, and yes, he was male, but those were/are just small parts of his complex, and very human personality. I think now the story was just an emotional vomit about how it feels once you’ve decided to get someone you care for out of your space.
Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
New Orleans is where lots of my stories take place. When I was a teenager, my dad started me bartending on the graveyard shift at his French Quarter dive. There were no locks on the doors because the bar never closed. It was the kind of place where you could drink dollar-fifty Dixies and play the jukebox after work or score an eight-ball and a hooker at sunrise. It was a depraved, magnificent place, and home to some of the best storytellers I’ve ever met.
Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
The usual crazy writer stuff. There are notecards scattered all over my house with indecipherable epiphanies that I scrawled after waking from a dream and/or too much red wine. Things like: Soft boiled eggs and my aloe plant: A connection to systemic poverty? or Fuck Willie Nelson!!! The girl at table two is everywhere… Sometimes I come back to these notecards for inspiration, remember my initial train of thought, and write something great. Usually I just shake my head and throw them back on the floor.
Who typically gets the first read of your work?
In general, I share fresh work with other authors, people in my writing group. Relatives or close friends tend to think they know me. This limits their freedom in interpreting the work and can result in non-objective feedback. Even though I write mostly fiction, the autobiographical murmurs in my stories are not buried deep, which makes it easy for someone close to me to conflate fictional characters and events with the real thing. Truth is, when I write a storyline or even just a single character, they are usually a mishmash of anecdote and imagination that morph into their own creatures.
What are you working on currently?
A journalism piece about politically correct censorship of fiction. It parallels historic periods of censorship in literature with the current trend of “cancel culture” now targeting fiction authors; how this impacts the publishing world and what it means for the future of artistic freedom.
What are you reading right now?
The Victoria’s Secret Catalog.
KATHLEEN HAWES is a creative writer currently conducting field research on the language and barbarism of the ten-year-old Southern Vermont male. Areas of close study include: Pig Latin, arm-pit farts, the removal of gravel from fleshy areas, how not to get shot in the butt with a Nerf Gun. Once, somebody accused Kathleen’s authorial voice of having “a knack for utter unflinching cruelty.” It was the best compliment she ever got.
