“The Entomologist” by Hadley Moore appeared in Issue 18 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear a little more about this story.
I wrote the first draft of “The Entomologist” quickly, but it took several revisions before I could see the shape of it clearly. Big thanks to Christine Sneed, my mentor in AWP’s Writer to Writer program, who provided the final bit of feedback I needed to finish.
What was the most difficult part of completing this story?
Research. There is a lot to know about termites, and I started this story without any of that knowledge. It came in handy when I found winged insects swarming near my house and could tell they were (harmless) flying ants, not termites.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka. Like her earlier book, When the Emperor Was Divine, it is short and deceptively simple—but gorgeous and resonant.
When a friend asked for a book recommendation recently, I narrowed down the list of 52 I wanted to give her to these two.
One of my favorite things in the world is recommending books I’ve loved.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Hilary Mantel. I think she is a genius. I inhaled the first two books in her Thomas Cromwell series, Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, and when the third comes out I will drop everything.
I also loved her linked novels Every Day Is Mother’s Day and Vacant Possession, and her story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
My short story collection Not Dead Yet and Other Stories won Autumn House Press’s 2018 fiction contest and is forthcoming in September 2019.
I also have a novel manuscript and am at work on another collection.
Our thanks to Hadley for taking the time to answer a few questions and share her work. Read Hadley’s story, “The Entomologist,” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/fiction-the-entomologist.
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Hadley Moore’s short story collection Not Dead Yet and Other Stories won Autumn House Press’s 2018 fiction contest and is forthcoming in September 2019. Her stories, novel excerpts, and nonfiction have appeared in Newsweek, McSweeney’s, Witness, Amazon’s Day One, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the revived December, the Indiana Review, Anomaly (formerly Drunken Boat), Quarter After Eight, Confrontation, The Drum, Ascent, Midwestern Gothic, Redux, Knee-Jerk Magazine, and other publications. She is at work on a novel and another collection, and is an alumna of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Find more at http://www.hadleymoore.net/.