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" For about two years, while researching 'The Wolf Border,' I was a complete wolf bore. I would regurgitate everything I was researching, whether people were interested or not. "

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" I don't like novels that tie everything up in a plot-y way. I always think that's not really true of life, particularly of people in power. "

Sarah Hall

Power

Think

Always

" In my early 20s, connecting with fiction was a difficult process. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to what was meaningful, what convinced, and what made sense. "

" The short story is very good at looking at shadow psychologies and how the system breaks down underneath. "

" You think back and you ask yourself why you became so interested in wolves. I think it was because when I was very small, growing up in a little hamlet near Shap, we would go to Lowther Wildlife Park for birthday parties. Now closed, it was only three miles from my parents' house. "

" One of the things I try to do with my writing is try to evoke the spirit of the place. I think these things imprint on the landscape and the culture. "

" Wonderful characters rotate around and through bookshops on a daily basis, competing with and possibly even triumphing over fiction when it comes to entertainment, strangeness and inspiration. "

" The beauty of interdisciplinary conversation is that the mode of expression is essentially different for each practitioner, even if ideas are shared. "

" You are often asked to explain your work, as if the reader isn't able to work it out. And people always try and label you by your work. "

" I can gabble on now, but I couldn't when I was a kid, so I spent a lot of time in my own head on the moors by myself. It felt like writing was the right way to express myself. "

" When I moved back to Cumbria, one of the first things I did was locate a decent bookshop. "

" I don't reckon there are many writers who start out really expecting writing to be an attainable occupation. Well, I didn't. It was a pipe dream. "

" There's nothing like the vast, dark Atlantic to remind you of your mortality. But terror can also be exhilarating. "

Sarah Hall

Dark

Your

" For its speculations to be taken seriously, dystopian fiction must be part of a discussion of contemporary society, a projection of ongoing political failures perhaps, or the wringing of present jeopardy for future disaster. "

" I'm very aware of modern countryside issues, such as rewilding: how, as science progresses, we begin to understand that a healthy ecosystem is multiform. "

" I like extreme situations: people pushed out of their comfort zones; the civil veneer stripped off. "

" You always hope you'll surprise somebody with the work. If you write something human and appealing, the perfect reader could be anyone. "

" Language description and metaphors seem readily available. The things I have to work harder at are plot, pacing, and form. "

" It's taken me 15 years to feel I might be able to write and publish short stories, and for the assiduous checks of the industry to allow some through. "

Sarah Hall

Short

Years

" I studied the short story as part of my creative writing course at university but then set off as a novelist. Generally, there is a sense that even if you want to write short stories, you need to do a novel first. "

" I don't think practitioners should necessarily be advertising their work. "

" I was the feral, mud-bathing, tree-climbing variety of child. Why would I want to read about pirates when I could build a raft and terrorise sheep along the riverbanks? "

" I don't see that books can be written without political context - not if they're relevant and ambitious. "

" I write in the mornings or afternoons - I'm not a night owl and can write for only four or five hours maximum. "

" I'm a home-roamer and can't do study or office scenarios. "

" I've always been interested in the history of radical feminism - what happened to those women of the 1960s and '70s. "

" I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown. "

" There was a lot of fiction I did not enjoy, whose landscapes seemed bland and unevocative, the characters faint-hearted within them, the very words lacking vibrancy. "

" Writers cannot simply have a go, imagining it's easier to produce a story than a novel because fewer words are required. Have a go by all means; be intrepid, but be equipped. "

Sarah Hall

Than

Words

" I am a feminist, although I always worry saying that because you then get people asking you about the 1970s. "

" Apex predators are good for an environment in terms of biodiversity and trophic cascade - we have very few. But realistically, only a few areas could sustain free-roaming wolves in Britain, mostly in Scotland. "