Author Interview: Elizabeth Emerson Hancock
June 25th, 2008A little while ago, I reviewed Trespassers Will Be Baptized by Elizabeth Emerson Hancock. As you can tell from my review, I really enjoyed it. Luckily for me, and you, Elizabeth agreed to a short e-mail interview. Hopefully you will enjoy reading her answers to my questions…no matter how bad my questions were!
Thanks Elizabeth!
What made you decide to write about “growing up Baptist”?
Well, I noticed a trend in memoirs written by adults about their young lives in the church — they only got written when the author’s church experience was terrible. When I began writing Trespassers, the hot memoirs were written by people who’d been molested by priests as children. Today, it’s brides of polygamists, married at fourteen. I had a typical Protestant upbringing, in a typical American town. I took part in the ritual of Vacation Bible School, the routine of Wednesday nights (when ballgames were never scheduled), the humiliation of playing a donkey in the Christmas pageant, the agony of church camp and overbearing Sunday School teachers. Nothing sensational or tabloid-worthy, but I didn’t think that made my experience any less significant. I sat on a pew like a lot of other kids, tried not to fall asleep during the prayer like a lot of other kids. I tasted the church supper rolls, and cannot replicate their deliciousness to this day. I think part of what makes that experience extraordinary after all is that is was so common, so familiar. That’s what made it part of a book that I thought needed to be written.
What is your favorite memory from the book?
Lord, they’re all my favorite. You should’ve seen the twenty or so that are lying shredded on the floor beneath my editor’s desk, right now. In all seriousness, I’ll say that Meg’s preaching to her stuffed animals has to rank right at the top. When you’re young, your siblings are strange beings. Period. Why do they do the bizarre, annoying-as-all-get-out-stuff they do? God only knows. You only care about your power to ignore them, so long as your parents will let you. But when you are faced with the task of recreating one of those “bizarre” memories (one that you’d merely chuckled at before) for readers, when you have to sit down and really focus on explaining what was probably happening in her little head, it’s as if you meet that sibling all over again. You understand their little self, years after it’s grown and the child who spoke the sermon is gone. It’s a bittersweet process.
How exciting is it to be the #1 book in Amazon.com’s “Baptist” category?
Ha! Well, as you know Amazon is a fickle friend. But it does feel pretty empowering to be beating Jerry Falwell. I’d feel way more victorious about beating Joel Osteen, though, in the broader “memoirs that have something to do with religion” category (which is HUGE, by the way. Probably because most famous people have found Jesus at some point in their lives.) He’s still alive, and looks pretty scrappy.
I realize Trespassers just recently released, but what are you going to write next?
I’m currently writing a novel, sort of a ghost story with lots of folklore themes, set along the Kentucky back roads. And, of course, if demand is sufficient, Trespassers II.
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June 25th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Thanks for the interview, as always revealing in terms of what you did not know about the author. I also like Elizabeth’s take on religious memoirs – its true that there are certain trends that seem to pop up depending on the current news cycle.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Thanks for the interview. I know Emy and all of her family. Worked with her dad for a number of years after he retired from the pulpit. Emy was my summer intern one year. I’m not surprised her book is doing so well. Even as a college undergraduate, she was polished, literate and scary smart, but always charming and fun.