Melissa Faliveno: The Story Led the Way, and I Followed
In this interview, author Melissa Faliveno discusses the similarities and differences between her nonfiction writing and her new literary novel, Hemlock.
Melissa Faliveno is the author of the novel Hemlock (Little, Brown, 2026) and the essay collection Tomboyland, which was named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, New York Public Library, O, the Oprah Magazine, Electric Literature, and Debutiful, and received a 2021 Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her work, which has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and named a notable selection in Best American Essays, has appeared in Esquire, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Literary Hub, Prairie Schooner, Brevity, and Brooklyn Rail, among others, and in the anthologies Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown’s Cult Classic (Harper Perennial, 2022) and the forthcoming Hit Repeat Until I Hate Music (Split/Lip, March 2026). Melissa is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina and lives in the woods outside Chapel Hill. Learn more at MelissaFaliveno.com, and follow her on X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky.
In this interview, Melissa discusses the similarities and differences between her nonfiction writing and her new literary novel, Hemlock, her advice for other writers, and more.
Name: Melissa Faliveno
Literary agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit
Book title: Hemlock
Publisher: Little, Brown
Release date: January 20, 2026
Genre/category: Literary fiction, gothic fiction, LGBTQ, horror
Previous titles: Tomboyland: Essays (Topple/Little A, 2020)
Elevator pitch: A woman haunted by a dark inheritance returns to the woods where her mother vanished, in this queer Midwestern Gothic.
What prompted you to write this book?
I was alone in a remote little cabin in the Northwoods of Wisconsin to finish my first book, Tomboyland. I was there for about six weeks, and it was the most alone I’d ever been. It was a place I knew well and had never really been afraid of, but coming from New York City, where I’d been living for many years, the solitude was disorienting—especially the silence, and the solidity of darkness at night.
There was no WiFi, and cell service was spotty at best and would often cut out completely at night. I spent my days writing and revising, and in the evenings I would sit on the porch with a beer and a book. One night, a doe showed up to the feeder, and then she kept coming back every night. I said “hello” to her, and imagined her speaking back. That’s when the idea for the novel was born.
I’ve always loved horror and the specific mythologies and folklore of a place, and I’ve been thinking about the intersections of inheritance, addiction, gender, and the Midwest for a long time. I’m always returning to Wisconsin, where I was born and raised, in my work, and this particular corner of it in the Northwoods is a really strange, wonderful, and idiosyncratic place that I’ve spent a lot of time in, so I wanted to write the world of it. I wasn’t so much planning to write a novel as the novel sort of began insisting on coming into being—which felt pretty right, given the weird and creepy nature of the story it’s telling.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
All told, it’s been about a six-year process. I first conceived of the idea in the spring of 2019, finished my first of several drafts in 2020, and sold the book in summer 2024. The years in between were spent in multiple rounds of deep revision, and the year after sale was a final round of edits with my editor, Vivian Lee, plus copy edits and proofreading. I don’t think the idea changed so much as it felt kind of fluid, especially in those revision years. It took on a shape and a life of its own as I wrote and revised, which was a pretty fun experience. The story led the way, and I followed.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
Publishing fiction has felt very different than publishing nonfiction, and as this book goes out into the world, I’m sure I’ll keep learning about those differences. In publishing personal essays or memoir, the story is you—who you are is the story. You and the work are inextricable. People read the book, and it’s like not just the work but your whole life is being examined and dissected and reviewed and evaluated (just saying that aloud, I wonder not for the first time why we ever choose to write nonfiction).
In fiction, I think the work gets to speak for itself a bit more, because the author isn’t the subject or story. Not that the work isn’t still deeply personal or that pieces of the author don’t exist on the page, but there’s more distance between me and story. Which felt true of writing this book—it felt like this story existed outside of me, in many ways, and I was just kind of the vessel for telling it. Though of course there’s certainly some autobiographical elements in Hemlock, and a lot of me in Sam, it’s been both strange and extremely refreshing to be able to separate myself from the work in this way—to just let it head out into the world and exist as this thing I made, let these characters and this story have a life of their own, rather than my own life being on display.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Definitely. Perhaps paradoxically, I think I learned more about myself in the process of writing this novel than I did writing my first book, which was a collection of deeply personal essays. I think because I had that creative distance, more room to separate myself from what I was writing, I actually started to see parts of myself, through the lens of this character and her struggles, more clearly. I was writing some stories, however slant, that I felt I couldn’t really tell in nonfiction. I had also never really pursued fiction writing seriously; I took a few fiction classes as both an undergrad and grad student, and had written a few stories (and even published one, which was not very good), but had never completed a novel. The craft of fiction is not so different from nonfiction, but there were certain elements like plot, pacing, and dialogue that I really learned and honed as I went. This is a pretty interior book, but as an essayist by training, sustaining one book-length narrative was new to me. I really had to force myself out of reflective mode sometimes and make some things happen. A few craft books, like Matt Bell’s Refuse to Be Done and George Saunders’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, really helped.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
As was true of my last book, I hope most of all that the readers who need this book will find it, or that it will find them. The queer folks—especially the genderqueer and trans folks; the Midwesterners; the people from other rural places whose relationship to those places might be complicated. I hope that anyone who’s struggled with addiction, substance abuse, depression, or self-harm, or has been touched by mental illness or suicide, will find company in this book, maybe even see themselves in it. I hope it will compel readers to think about the intersections of body and queerness and place, and mythologies of the monstrous. And I hope people will come to know the Northwoods, because it’s a really magical place.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Make a ritual of your writing practice, just like you might any other practice that’s an integral part of your life—whether it’s taking a morning walk, going to the gym (or church, if that’s your thing), calling your mom, feeding your cat, feeding yourself. Define your writing time, treat it like it’s sacred (I like to light a stick of incense, and write for at least as long as it burns), and defend it with your life.
