Drinks with Addison Hoggard
Aizu Nihonshu
This week, we sat down with recent contributor, Addison Hoggard, whose story “In the Mood” appeared in Wrong Turn Lit a couple weeks ago. If you haven’t yet, check it out (totally free) here:
Then, pop a top and enjoy.
“In the Mood” is such a trippy story, have you found yourself in a similar situation?
In some ways, yes! The premise of “In the Mood” was born from a feeling that I had sometime around the start of the pandemic. It was a hard time for everyone so I’ll spare y’all the details, but I was stuck back in my hometown (in the middle of nowhere) and dealing with a lot of loss and grief. If you read “In the Mood” I think you can see the narrator try to put a name to a lot of those specific feelings, or at least begin to interrogate them. I’d like to imagine that anyone who’s ever been haunted by something, be it a feeling, a person, an experience, can relate to what the narrator’s going through—that’s how I think of it, at least. I’ve never been visited by Jerry Garcia, and since I’m afraid of any ghost, I’d prefer it remained that way.
Why Jerry Garcia?
Yes, Jerry Garcia. The million dollar question. I used the word “haunted” earlier and I think it’s a good way to describe how I feel about Jerry Garcia as well. The narrator’s dead head dad is like my own father, who would play The Grateful Dead all the time. As a kid, I knew I liked the music, but I have to admit that it all just blurred together for me since I wasn’t old enough to understand anything about music. When I sat down to write the first draft of this story, which was a poem initially, I asked myself: What was something that felt inescapable to me? Jerry Garcia’s music was the first thing that came to mind. When I think about my childhood, all I hear is The Grateful Dead. So, I took that personal feeling of being cocooned by The Grateful Dead, by Jerry Garcia, and graphed it onto an adult narrator at a hot spot in his life.
The setting of “In the Mood” seems like it’s based on your birthplace of North Carolina. How much of this setting was based on your memories of living there?
I’m so happy that you asked this question. Yes, this setting is absolutely pulled from my memories. North Carolina is vast and beautiful. I’m from the northeastern part of the state, where it’s all swamp and pine trees right up to the edge of the Albemarle Sound. I used to think that if you wanted space, your best bet would be to go and stand in the middle of a field. That’s the only place you can escape the pine trees that crowd around, and even then, those trees are always sentinel on the horizon. This story in particular called for a setting that suffocates, so I was thinking a lot about the pine trees, the crops, and the little spaces we’ve carved out for ourselves there while writing it.
Do you write about North Carolina often?
Yes! Maybe every writer has their thing, their pent up stories or images that have been with them all their life. For me, it’s all about North Carolina. It’s about the muggy summer days, water moccasins, rocking chairs, fields of tobacco, big billowy clouds, etc. I can’t seem to get it out of my system. Funny thing is, though, I’ve found I can only really write about it when I’m in a different geographic space. When I’m there, I’m too in awe of it all, or maybe even too oppressed by it. The distance from home helps me to see things in a different way. “In the Mood” is my first prose publication (still feels unreal), but if you take a look at my poetry, you’ll find a lot of verse in which I’m grappling with home, whatever that means.
How did you end up in Japan?
I’m in Japan working as a teacher. I’m a teacher by trade and have been teaching in some capacity or other since I was 18. While teaching is a passion of mine, I also love learning new languages and traveling, so being a traveling teacher is a great gig for me. I can do what I love while stimulating my other passions, too! And, as I mentioned earlier, living abroad gives me that much needed space to be able to write about North Carolina and my experiences growing up there.
What was the last book you read? What did you think about it?
The last book I read was Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart and wow, was it gritty! Gritty and good! I was entranced by the prose, the characters, the story, the absolute everything that is this novel! I wonder if any other writers can relate to this, but sometimes I find it hard to turn off my student brain when reading. Like, every time I open a book, I want the knowledge of the author to flow into me. I want to absorb all the juicy craft bits. With this book, though, I was able to enjoy it 100% as a reader—I was totally immersed from start to finish. That’s how I know it was a good book.
Do you have a favorite author, or one that inspires you? What is your favorite work by them, and why?
I have so many favorites, but I’ll save this space for the author that inspired me to start taking my own writing seriously: Garth Greenwell. I read his novella What Belongs to You when I was a freshman in college and still grappling with my own sexuality. The book filled a void within me that I wasn’t aware I had. I love his style of writing, the beautiful prose, the intensity of his characters and their feelings. Reading his fiction made me think, hey, I could do this, too, I can actually do this writing thing. Maybe the biggest reason for that was the relatability of his work. As I’ve come into my own voice as a writer over the years, I’ve found new things to admire about his prose.
Do you have anything you’re working on now? Anything you’d like us to shout-out or be on the lookout for?
As always, I’m just writing. Poems, flash pieces, short stories, you name it. I recently won the Fractured Lit 2023 Micro Challenge, which is both unexpected and exciting!