Leah Hampton

Abstract

Leah Hampton Annie Frazier (bio) Leah Hampton's first book, F*ckface and Other Stories, was released in July 2020. The twelve powerful, funny, tragic, and surprising stories are set in towns across the Appalachian South—from Western North Carolina to Eastern Kentucky to West Virginia to Tennessee and beyond—and are populated with complex and complicating modern Southern characters who shoulder through precarious and devastating circumstances, often in darkly humorous and [End Page 60] subtly rebellious ways. Through these characters Hampton—originally from Eastern Kentucky—interrogates the Appalachian South, what it means to be from here, what it means to love this place. The sense of natural beauty in these modern mountain stories is lush and reverent, and the dual threats of climate change and industry feature prominently. On a sunny day in November, Hampton and emerging fiction writer Annie Frazier met via Zoom for a pandemic-friendly conversation about Hampton's work. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. _____ ANNIE FRAZIER: You live here in Western North Carolina, and I gather your family comes partly from Eastern Kentucky. Can you talk to me about what draws you to write about this region and its people, and what importance place holds for you in general as a writer? LEAH HAMPTON: What draws me to write about this region is, yeah, I have a lot of family connection to it, and also I don't know how you can live here and not create something. I often wonder about people who live here—is there anyone who doesn't then take up pottery or start painting or...? It's the kind of place where you want to create. I just feel really compelled to write about it because I live in a naturally beautiful area. But also because the history is so important to me—I'm a history buff—and because of the complexity of it. It's a misunderstood place, and often a marginalized place, and I find that really interesting. So it's just this perfect storm of beauty and complexity and marginalization that makes it a really good subject, especially for fiction, but for any art. [End Page 61] Click for larger view View full resolution Leah Hampton photo: Carrie Hachadurian [End Page 62] I think I'm of the Ron Rash school when it comes to place. I think people are defined by their topography. I think it affects us unconsciously—consciously, too. A lot of the characters in the book are being acted upon by the land, whether they realize it or not, and I think that's very common for a lot of people. You don't realize how much you're affected by the geography of the space that you live in until you really start to examine it. That's really interesting to me. I think if I lived anywhere, I would be writing about the place where I lived. AF: Your stories cover so much ground when it comes to the damage being inflicted on these mountains by climate change, pollution, and industry. Talk to me about what environmentalism means to you and how you've twined it into these stories. LH: My first job out of high school was working for Greenpeace, and in my younger days I was quite an eco-warrior—I mean, I wasn't, like, capturing whaling ships or anything. But I was a fundraiser and I worked for the Blue Ridge Parkway and for the National Parks and Conservation Association, things like that. And that was where I learned about a lot about this area specifically. But it's also where I learned about editing, because I had to do a lot of grant writing and stuff like that, so it was this really important apprenticeship in how the world works, and it wound up being important to me professionally and personally. I've always cared about those things and I've always been interested in nature; I love to hike. And I did my undergrad in history, and some graduate work—I really love to study history. Also I'm a very political person. I ran for local office...