In round 7 of our contributor interview series we spoke with Hadley Moore. Hadley is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is at work on a novel and a collection of stories.
What are you reading right now?
Michael Parker’s The Watery Part of the World. (Full disclosure—he’s one of my former teachers.)
I think the first thing I require of fiction is to be engaged, and the second is not to be distracted by lazy sentences. I can—and like to—do craft analysis, but first I have to be taken in by the story and the language. Parker’s new novel has taken me in.
What else have you been reading this summer?
I reread Denis Johnson’s Angels and Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban because I’ve lately been fascinated by short novels (The Great Gatsby, The Hours, On Chesil Beach, The Age of Grief, A Simple Heart, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider—I see some of these are veering into the territory of the novella—are other favorites.)
"Classic" you’ve been meaning to read?
Oh, lots, but the one I’ve been thinking about lately is Ulysses. I used to be afraid of the classics, but now they’re a regular part of my reading life. Undisciplined, I would gobble up contemporary fiction, mostly novels, so I try to read in groups of six: one contemporary novel or collection, one classic, one book of poetry, one literary journal, one craft book, and one book by someone I know (these categories often overlap). I’m not perfect about it, and I do give myself a break sometimes—I went on a contemporary-fiction binge last winter after reading War and Peace, the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation—but I think my six-book rotation encourages me to think more broadly
Ulysses:)
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