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Natalie S. Harnett is an MFA graduate of Columbia. She is a winner of the Sandra Schor Award for Fiction and Poetry and the James Kruezer Award for Most Promising Poet. She has been awarded an Edward Albee Fellowship, a Summer Literary Seminars Fellowship, and a Vermont Studio Center Writer's Grant. Harnett has been published in The Madison Review and The MacGuffin. She lives on Long Island with her husband and toddler.
Natalie S. Harnett's website
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Q. How did you come up with the idea for The Hollow Ground?
When I started The Hollow Ground, all I knew was that I wanted it set in Carbondale, PA and I wanted it told from the perspective of a young girl. I was also very interested in telling the story of what happened to Carbondale once the coal mines shut down. It took me many months to nail the young girl's voice, but once I did the writing took off. So at first the plot was more a process of discovery than planning. It wasn't until I learned about the Carbondale mine fire and knew I also wanted to tell the story of that fire that I wrote an outline and began the first draft of what would eventually become The Hollow Ground.
Q. This is a story about an environmental disaster that happened over fifty years ago. How does that have any relevance for today?
I think all the current controversy over fracking and oil drilling makes it especially relevant. It's a story about family and survival, but it's also a cautionary tale about what happens when we delve underground.
Q. The book is set in the early 1960s before you were born, in an area where you've never lived, yet there's a striking authenticity ...
M. Allen Cunningham's debut novel The Green Age of Asher Witherow, set in nineteenth-century Northern California, was a #1 Book Sense Pick and a finalist for the 2005 Book Sense Book of the Year Award alongside Marilynne... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Hollow Ground
Try:
The Green Age of Asher Witherow
by M. Allen Cunningham
Vanessa Diffenbaugh was born in San Francisco and raised in Chico, California. After studying creative writing and education at Stanford University, Vanessa taught art and writing to youth in low-income communities. To write ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Hollow Ground
Try:
The Language of Flowers
by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
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