by Kenneth A. Briggs 

K. Briggs: You won a national prize in 1997, the Katharine Bakeless Nason award, for your collection of short stories, Tell Me Everything. What effect did that have?

J. Hinnefeld: The effects were mixed. It was, of course, a great boost. On the other hand, I have to admit that it gave me rather high expectations that were not real productive. Mainly, it felt like a very meaningful vote of confidence largely because the contest judge that year, Joanna Scott, is a writer I admire very much; and she’s continued to be very supportive.

KB: One thing I like about fiction is the notion that people get noticed, something I suppose we all want. You notice them. Is that part of your thinking, too?

JH: Sure. I’m interested in people who don’t always get noticed and get overlooked – that’s the character type that I’m drawn to, although I’m also drawn to eccentric characters who get noticed in a negative way. I’m interested in looking at them in a different light in an effort to see the value in these people. I’m always pushing my students toward exploring atypical characters unlike themselves.

KB: We live in a culture that stresses glamour and high visibility — but you’re working to say there’s drama, there’s beauty in everybody out there.

JH: I don’t think that makes me unique; I think that’s been true forever for writers. There’s a fascination with everyday life.

KB: With outsiders?

JH: Outsiders and people who aren’t glamorous and aren’t highly visible but feel deeply and live lives much like our own.

KB: When I read you, I think also of Walker Percy, John Irving, and Flannery O’Connor.

JH: I read Walker Percy in college and am flattered to be compared to him. Flannery O’Connor I know best, and I idolize her.

KB: When did you first read her?

JH: With any seriousness, in college, but I remember reading "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" in high school — being given the assignment of rewriting the ending of that story — of course everyone’s going to rewrite it so no one in the family gets killed, and the misfit turns out to be a nice guy.

KB: What did you love about her?

JH: She’s so darkly funny, such a piercing observer of her surroundings and of people — and she manages to observe and critique at the same time, but does not make people caricatures. You can’t just dismiss them as simpleminded or backwoods. They also have these spiritual yearnings and emotional complexity. There’s her fundamental respect for these people whom she’s also able to mock. I admire that. It’s a great thing to pull off. I feel the same level of disdain sometimes for people. You can’t only live in that, it’s not a happy place to be if that is all you think there is to people.

KB: Have you always noticed people?

JH: I think so, at least for a long time. I think I’ve been a quiet observer since I was a child. Maybe that temperament is common to writers.

KB: Did you remember someone in your early constellation that you felt an urge to write about?

JH: That’s happened in a lot of things I’ve written. I don’t know I felt it as a young person. I don’t think I thought of myself as giving voice to people until I was older. I didn’t see myself as a writer when I was young. I was probably emotionally going that way, but it wasn’t something that anyone I knew did. So it wouldn’t have occurred to me to say that’s what I want to do until I became a college student. I hadn’t seen myself as someone creating worlds.

KB: Did it click during a particular time in college?

JH: Yes. I didn’t even take any English classes until I was a junior. I was pretty sure I would not do too well; didn’t have much confidence in myself as a reader. But I took a 20th-century fiction class, and the next semester I took a creative-writing class. So I was reading Joyce and Faulkner and all these great writers – and getting very excited about it and discovering I could do it.

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