Interview: Halle Hill
We are thrilled to announce Halle Hill, author of the award-winning debut short story collection, Good Women, as the guest judge for the CRAFT 2025 Short Fiction Prize. In celebration of the contest’s launch, Halle Hill generously granted Editor in Chief Courtney Harler a brief interview via email correspondence. As fellow Southern women, Hill and Harler discussed writing women, writing Appalachia, writing minds and bodies, and writing religion. The interview ends on a tantalizing note of superstition and secrecy, leaving readers wanting more of Halle Hill’s fiction. —CRAFT
Courtney Harler: Halle, we are so pleased you work with you as our guest judge for the CRAFT 2025 Short Fiction Prize. Let’s talk about your short story collection, Good Women. For you, what made a “good woman”? As in, of all the characters you’ve written, how did you decide to feature these particular women in this particular collection? And how did the title of the collection occur to you? As a debut writer, what were your main considerations?
Halle Hill: Thank you for having me as a guest judge for this contest. The title of the collection is a nod to Lucille Clifton’s poetry and memoir collection Good Woman. I wasn’t seeking to answer the question of what makes a “good woman”—the project for me was less definitive and more exploratory. I wanted to find some expansiveness and explore identities of womanhood from the region I am from while gleaning from stories I heard and observed. The women in this book were largely composites and constellations of women around me, above me, and beyond me. I wanted to create a book that was in motion, deeply Black, and rooted in place, allowing Black femmes to be the center. The rest came together in a patchwork quality, sentence by sentence. My main consideration was to write a book that gave women agency above their morality or conditioning. And over the years it took to create Good Women, I found myself with a collection of unlinked stories that were somehow talking to one another.
CH: This story collection is beautifully embodied. Well, human bodies, and their necessary corresponding functions—eating, evacuating, deteriorating, and so on—are not always beautiful, but what I mean to highlight and praise is how well your characters inhabit their own bodies. One of my MFA mentors, Gayle Brandeis, always encouraged me to get more inside the body when I wrote—my work tended to be too cerebral (and therefore, I would say, somewhat sterile). Perhaps it’s a kind of bravery, to let bodies speak for themselves. How do you prefer to approach the delicate balance between interiority and exteriority? Body image and bodily autonomy are also major themes in this collection—how did those issues act upon your mind (and your body) as you wrote about these characters?
HH: I think everything begins in the body. I will probably always return to it in my work. When I approached interiority and exteriority in the book, I focused on meaning-making. As the women worked to make sense of themselves or manage their lives, I found myself focused on their interiority to set a sense of urgency, intimacy, and sensitivity on the page. I am not plot focused, so naturally my work leans toward the interior of a person or a situation. I wanted Black bodies to fill every page of this book.
CH: Halle, I know you’re from East Tennessee and now live in North Carolina. I grew up in Kentucky, and I think it would be difficult, if not impossible, to write about Appalachia, or the South in general, without delving into matters of religion or spirituality. Like Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Life of Church Ladies, Good Women also explores questions of Christian propriety. From the suspected abuses of Deacon James in “Honest Work” to the ulterior motives of Lucille in “Keeping Noisettes,” I believe readers are meant to examine these darker aspects of humanity within the context of religious tenets. For instance, let me home in on this particular conversation between Lucille and her daughter, Mary:
“Mom, you’re not everyone’s savior. This is getting ridiculous. Do you want these people to murder us in our sleep? It’s a matter of time.”
“I know I’m not everyone’s savior,” Lucille said to an empty room.
Mary huffed in the kitchen now, making breakfast loudly, the pots and pans banged, the cabinet slammed.
I love the sharp contrast in this scene between Lucille’s savior complex and Mary’s impatience. Who is the “good [Christian] woman” in this scenario? Perhaps the very idea is rather reductive, which may be your point? Could you further discuss the role of “the religiously deficient” (quoted from “How to Cut and Quarter,” the last story in the collection) in your work, or in Southern fiction in general?
HH: It is impossible for me to think about America apart from religion, let alone the South or Appalachia. Whether we are religious or not, god is everywhere and woven into our lives, cultures, and identities on a cellular level. Propriety and respectability are both issues that the women in this collection brush up against as they wrestle for freedom. Some see conformity as offering a sense of self-imposed security. Others are more impervious to external influence but wrestle to find a sense of wholeness amidst opposition. Both Lucille and Mary are women looking to create space for themselves and have needs they are trying to meet. Generational differences, age, and insight affect how they navigate those needs and longings.
CH: For my last question—our readers will be eager to know!—what’s on the horizon for you? Good Women published to wide acclaim in 2023—any particular publications or projects you’d like to preview for us in 2025?
HH: I am working on new things but pretty superstitious so I won’t speak before I get the work done. More fiction though—I can happily share that.
HALLE HILL is the author of Good Women (Hub City Press), which was named a 2023 Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, O Magazine, Electric Literature, Book Riot, and Southwest Review. A finalist for the 2023 Weatherford Award for Appalachian writing, she is the winner of the 2020 Crystal Wilkinson Creative Writing Prize for Emerging Black Writers and the 2020 Oxford American Debut Fiction Prize. Her short stories have been translated into French and published in journals including Joyland, New Limestone Review, Atlanta Magazine, and the Oxford American, among others, as well as featured on the Ursa Short Fiction podcast. A born-and-raised East Tennessean, she currently lives, works, and teaches in North Carolina. Find her on Twitter @hallehillwrites.
COURTNEY HARLER (she/her) is a queer writer, editor, and educator based in Northern Kentucky. She holds an MFA from University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe (2017) and an MA from Eastern Washington University (2013). Court is currently editor in chief of CRAFT and editorial director for Discover New Art, and has read and/or written for UNT Press’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize, The Masters Review, Funicular Magazine, Reflex Fiction, and Chicago Literati in recent years. She also instructs and edits for Project Write Now, and (co)hosted their podcast, PWN’s Debut Review. For her creative work, Courtney has been honored by fellowships and/or grants from Key West Literary Seminar, Writing By Writers, Community of Writers, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and Nevada Arts Council. Her work has been published in multiple genres in literary magazines around the world. Find her on Instagram @CourtneyHarler.
