“Witches take their names from places, for places are what give them their strength. The place need not be beautiful, or habitable, or even green. Sand and salt, so much the better. Scrub pine, plumberry and brambles, better still. From every bitter thing, after all, something hardy will surely grow.”

Alice Hoffman, “The Witch of Truro”

In a recent interview with The Kenyon Review, following the publication of “The Witch of Truro” in the spring issue of the magazine, author Alice Hoffman reaffirms her fascination with witches and other extraordinary characters who face all-too-human challenges. Hoffman, known for her facility in spinning magical tales with literary depth, is the prolific author of fifteen novels, with her sixteenth on the way, and numerous additional works for children and young adults.

Blackbird House (Doubleday, July 2004) is a collection of tales that can be construed as short fiction or as a novel; each story stands alone and yet finds connection with the others. “The Witch of Truro” is the story of Ruth Declan, a mysterious and solitary figure, who begins the tale having lost everything in a fire. Even her witchcraft is powerless against the forces of destruction, and yet Ruth finds a path toward potential redemption, even as the path is riddled with thorns.

Loss and the mysterious stranger are continuing themes in Hoffman’s numerous novels and short fiction. On the other side of loss and isolation, however, are hope and human connection. Hoffman possesses a rare gift for lifting such potentially melancholy tales into a light-filled place: she may bestow extraordinary powers upon her characters, but their challenges serve to ground her fiction in the tradition of literary truth.

Hoffman was born in New York City in 1952 and grew up on Long Island. After receiving her B.A. from Adelphi University, she received a Mirrellees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, where she earned her M.A. in creative writing. Hoffman wrote her first novel, Property Of, at the age of twenty-one, while she was studying at Stanford. She has since enjoyed a publishing career of more than thirty years, a career that includes numerous translations and publication in more than one hundred foreign editions. Hoffman’s novels are frequently “notable books of the year” (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, People Magazine, and others), and have appeared frequently on the New York Times best seller list.

Hoffman, who is married and the mother of two sons, lives outside Boston, which has inspired the setting for many of her works of fiction. Her novels and stories are often a catalyst for further discussion and learning. Hoffman’s novel At Risk, concerning a family dealing with AIDS, is found on the reading lists of many universities, colleges, and secondary schools. Further, she donated all of her advance for Local Girls, a collection of interrelated fictions about love and loss on Long Island, to help create a breast cancer center near Boston.

Despite Hoffman’s beliefs in powers unseen, as she reveals in the following conversation, literary success is both a function of perseverance and the nurturing of one’s voice. And a little magic never hurts.

KENYON REVIEW: Many writers and readers have noted the magical quality of your writing. I’ve particularly enjoyed the way you weave magical, supernatural qualities in your characters alongside a “real world” groundedness. In other words, as a reader I believe in your characters’ struggles and human dilemmas, and their supernatural qualities don’t detract from the believability, or authenticity, of your stories. Could you talk a little bit about your use of the supernatural, or magical, in your writing?

ALICE HOFFMAN: I don't decide to use or not use magical or supernatural elements in fiction—it's more of an organic situation. But I do believe that this is the original literary tradition, that realism is the new kid in town, that magic, the supernatural, fairy tale, myth are an integral part of literature, the oldest way to tell a story.

KR: When I think of “magical realism,” I think of authors as diverse as Gabriel García Márquez and Louise Erdrich. Márquez draws on his cultural roots in his storymaking, as does Erdrich—while one culture is Latin American and the other is Native American. What are the cultural influences, if any, for your own use of the supernatural, or magical, in your own writing?

AH: I think there are many influences. Fairy tales, my original childhood reading, and the literature of childhood. The stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, and of my grandmother. Folk tale, myth, family stories. But I don't think magic belongs to one culture or another. It is a part of family, history, tradition—it's everywhere.

KR: What authors have influenced you over the course of your writing career?

AH: Emily Brontë, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Grace Paley, William Faulkner. First loves for me.

KR: In your story “The Witch of Truro,” the narrator makes the statement, “From every bitter thing, after all, something hardy will surely grow. From every difficulty, the seed that’s sown is that much stronger.” Does that narrative voice spring from your own beliefs?

AH: The narrative voice springs from a subconscious place so deep I could not tell you where it is. Often I find, I believe, what my characters already know. The author is always the last to know. But I suppose, yes. I have to believe there is a reason for what is bitter. It's human nature to believe this, isn't it? The way we survive.

KR: That statement seems to capture so much of what your characters struggle with and grow from, in your adult as well as children’s literature. In the adult novel The Probable Future, for example, the “catastrophe” of Stella’s “seeing” the likely causes of death for those she meets results in her father’s imprisonment and an accusation of murder. But this pivotal event results in his redemption in a sense, his recovery from the downward spiral of alcoholism. Is this an appropriate reading on my part of the notion “something hardy will surely grow”? And how much does this play out in your other novels?

AH: When I was very ill, I read the amazing book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The author had been in the concentration camps, had lost his true love, had lost everything, and yet he survived. His philosophy: it is only through sorrow and loss and tragedy that we find the true meaning of our lives. I was undergoing radiation at the time. I believed him.

KR: Do you believe in witches?

AH: The answer can be found in how many little witches you find on Halloween. Power, mystery, control, all of it is meaningful in a personal and historical way, and as a symbol for the condition of women.

KR: In “The Witch of Truro,” as in the novel The Probable Future, the story springs from the theme of a homeless girl who is made to find her own way in a time and place that is not conducive to the concept of witches or witchcraft. The setting of Massachusetts certainly suggests the Salem Witch Trials. Is this intentional on your part?

AH: I think women's history is the history of witchcraft, a history of the disenfranchised and the lost. Living in Massachusetts there is a sense of the history of this place in a literary sense in the connection to Hawthorne and in a practical day-to-day way. This is what happened here, in the streets where we now walk.

KR: How important is setting to you in your writing? Does place inform your narrative in any way?

AH: I think place is a character, sometimes the most important. It informs everything else. The heartbeat behind all the action. My new book, Blackbird House, is set in the same house over a period of over two hundred years. The place is the most important character in the book. People come and go; the place remains.

KR: How did you become interested in witches and the supernatural?

AH: Fairy tales, myths, Mary Poppins, Ray Bradbury.

KR: Tell me about your biographical background. Where did you grow up? How did your upbringing and your childhood experiences influence your decision to become a writer, and when did you make that decision, or come to that place of knowing?

AH: Writers are readers who can't find the book they're looking for on the shelf. I never thought I could or would be a writer. Working class, no interest in education. A fanatical reader. Look what happened.

KR: Why do people read fiction? And if, as you say, “realism is the new kid in town,” do you think this threatens our need for fairy tale and myth?

AH: Not really. I think that’s why Harry Potter is being read by so many adults. It’s just amazing how many adults have read that book. People read fiction because it’s a very emotional, interactive experience, more so than any other art form, I think. Fiction is filled with truth and nonfiction is filled with lies. I feel that even when I’m writing. In nonfiction you’re purporting to tell the truth but it’s filtered through your own experiences and perceptions.

KR: Do you think there’s such a thing as “literary fiction” versus “fiction”? If so, what are the differences?

AH: That’s a really hard one. Well, I guess the differences are different from what they’re thought of. I think people think literary fiction doesn’t include genre writing. I think it’s about the level of the writing.

KR: What makes a story or novel “good”?

AH: Basically what it comes down to is whether or not the writer has a voice. For me it’s all about the voice. Other than that, it’s pretty much the same story told a million different ways.

KR: And what do you think that same story is?

AH: One of them is, a stranger comes to town. There are three or four of them . . . Basically, there are only so many stories. It’s only important how you tell the story and with what voice you tell the story.

KR: Let’s talk some more about your new book, Blackbird House. Is “The Witch of Truro” part of that book?

AH: It is. It’s so hard to make a distinction these days because people call so many things novels. You could call it a novel, you could call it short stories, you could call it whatever you want.

KR: I was intrigued by the story of Violet in another Blackbird House excerpt, “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.” I read it as a timeless story of coming of age, the intoxication of first love, and sibling rivalry. This, perhaps, is one of the reasons I was so drawn in: it had that archetypal element that links all of us. Do you think a work of fiction has to contain conflict in order to “work”?

AH: I kind of think everything has to contain conflict in order to work. I just know as a reader the voice would have to be spectacular in order for the writing to work without conflict. Sometimes voice can make up for the lack of action or the lack of conflict.

KR: What are your goals or primary concerns as a writer?

AH: I have more personal goals: To tell the best story that I can, to tell the story that I need to tell. I’m just very unclear as to what a writer's goals in publishing mean at this time. I’ve been really thinking a lot about what fiction means and the importance of fiction. I think after 9/11 a lot of writers asked questions: Why should I write? What is there to write about? Right after 9/11 I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, one of my favorite writers. I was struck by the whole idea that books become a part of who you are…and we transmit them to our children. Also after 9/11 I wrote a book for teens called Green Angel. It’s about a character who loses everybody. It’s about what happens when you lose everything and how you deal with that loss.

KR: What is the biggest challenge for you when you sit down to write a novel or a story?

AH: Every time I sit down to write a novel or a story I’m not exactly sure I know how to do it … It’s a learning process every time I sit down to do it. On the other hand, it’s what makes writing constantly interesting.

KR: You mentioned your experience with illness and how it changed you. If you feel comfortable doing so, could you talk a little bit more about that, in terms of how it affected you personally and as an artist?

AH: I think that as an artist it was really important to me. I had about a year of treatment of chemotherapy and radiation, and writing was just like a life raft for me. I wrote the whole time I was undergoing treatment. I thought about the book at the worst possible times and during the worst possible pain. It was such an escape for me … when it came down to it, but I did it anyway. It wasn’t about being published. I felt really strongly that I really wanted to make gold out of straw. Take what’s horrible in the world and turn it into gold.

KR: If you could give an aspiring writer one piece of advice, what would it be?

AH: First of all, I’m a big believer in master’s and M.F.A. programs. I think some people think that they create more jobless M.F.A.s. But I think it’s a year or two years out of your life that you can never get again, where you’re with people who care about writing and you basically get to write.

KR: Now that Blackbird House is published, what can we expect to see next from Alice Hoffman?

AH: My son and I have a picture book with Scholastic, Moondog, which will be published this summer, and I've just finished a new teen novel, The Foretelling, which will be published by Little, Brown next spring.

Julianna E. Thibodeaux writes journalism, criticism, fiction, and poetry. She is the recipient of a Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis and an arts criticism award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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