Jennifer Haigh
Jennifer Haigh
Jennifer Haigh is an American novelist and short story writer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
extremely family fond parochial raised spent twelve
I was raised in a Catholic family, spent twelve years in parochial schools, and had extremely fond memories of my interactions with Catholic clergy.
draw life none
Like all writers, I draw from life as I know it; but it's a refracted kind of reality, and none of it is factually true.
both family miner
Growing up, I didn't know anybody who didn't have a miner in the family. Both of my grandfathers were miners.
scare similar ways
Working in a prison, is, to my mind, similar in ways to working in a coal mine. It's going to scare away a lot of people.
alice common james remind richard william
William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place.
reading writing practice
Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy.
mother sacrifice men
That renunciation of human closeness, of our deepest instincts: is it, in the end, simply too much to ask? Good men-sound, healthy men-can't make the sacrifice, or don't want to; has Holy Mother settled for the unsound and unhealthy? Has the Church, ever pragmatic, made do with what is left?
art prayer distance
The human heart: its expansions and contractions its electrics and hydraulics the warm tides that move and fill it. For years Art had studied it from a safe distance from many perspectives...he listened in fascination and revulsion, in envy and pity. He dispensed canned wisdom, a little scripture. He sent them on their way with a prayer.
voice familiar wanted
I wanted only a familiar voice, someone who knew me. Not some earlier, larval version of myself. . .
loyalty powerful fog
It was a lesson most people learned much earlier; that even friendship could have an undisclosed shelf life. That loyalty and affection, so consuming and powerful, could dissipate like fog.
stories my-family
The story of my family. . .changes with the teller.
life remember small written
I have written my whole life. I remember writing as a small child.
learned performing structure
As a young writer, I learned a lot about grammatical structure from reading plays, from performing the plays. I think that was a wonderful apprenticeship.
known
'Baker Towers' is the book I've always known I would write, but it wasn't an easy book to do.