Hanna Halperin

How did you become a writer?

I’ve been writing stories since I was a kid. I would make up extra chapters of the books that I was reading in school and then I started making up my own. I took as many writing classes as I could because it was the thing I was most excited about. After college I took a few workshops with Sackett Street Writers Workshop and that’s when I learned about MFA programs. I got fixated on wanting to do one. At Wisconsin I wrote more in a relatively short time period than I ever had before, and I loved it. I felt really lucky to be writing and talking about books all the time. I’m always happiest when I’m in the middle of a draft. Since then I’ve been working and writing and it’s a balance that works for me. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

Mary Gaitskill, Deborah Eisenberg, Jhumpa Lahiri, Joan Silber, Lorrie Moore. I used to read a lot of The Best American Short Story collections and fall in love with stories—then authors—that way. Every time I read a book and am struck by it, I feel like it influences me or encourages me or gives me a sort of permission I didn’t even realize I was waiting for. I don’t know if that will ever stop and I hope it doesn’t. A few of those books in the past few years have been A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell and Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan. 

When and where do you write?

Before the pandemic I worked a lot in coffee shops. Now I mostly work in my apartment, either at my desk or on my couch. When I’m really engrossed in a project, I write all day, but mornings are always most productive. I work part-time so I don’t write on the days I’m working or teaching. I usually spend a good part of my weekends writing.

What are you working on now?

I’m editing my second novel. I would describe it as a portrait of a relationship having to do with addiction and codependence and obsession. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I go through periods—sometimes long ones—where I’m not writing anything but I don’t think of it as writer’s block. I’m soaking things in and reading and living. What inevitably happens is that I’ll return to writing sooner or later, and it’s always exciting when I do. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Different advice hits differently at different times, I think. Most recently: Stay off social media. 

What’s your advice to new writers? 

If it’s feeling weird or vulnerable or scary to write it, keep going! There are certain things that only you can write—try writing those things. Strangely enough, those will be the parts that resonate with someone else. 

Hanna Halperin is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her stories have been published in The Kenyon Review, n+1, New Ohio Review, Joyland, and others. She teaches fiction workshops at GrubStreet in Boston and works as a domestic violence counselor. Something Wild is her debut novel out now from Viking.