Interview at Stated Magazine

Last fall, Daniel Nester was kind enough to include me among a group of authors being interviewed for his undergraduate course on the art of writing interviews.

Earlier this week, the fruits of his students’ labor went up on Stated Magazine, an online journal devoted to publishing interviews of people who create things.

My interview is among them, a little excerpt is below, but you should also go to the site to read the entire thing:

KAYLA KUILEMA: In The Mere Weight of Words, what influenced you to write about Meredith and her tragic news regarding her father’s diagnosis?

CARISSA HALSTON: I started writing Mere’s story with the intention of writing about a person who had difficulty speaking. That difficulty complicated her estrangement from her father, as her awareness of her altered speech compounded with her awareness of her father’s awareness. She felt his scrutiny, always. So, when the book opens and she’s privy to news about him without actually receiving it from him, a role reversal occurs (though the reader won’t know that for another eighty pages).

I’m not sure that Mere sees the news as tragic. I think she immediately starts processing what was left unsaid between them, but doesn’t actually acknowledge her father’s health until she sees him. And even then, it’s not his tragedy she’s considering.