Jen Michalski: Congratulations on Hedge. I really loved it! I’m always interested in a book’s journey—can you tell us how you wound up working with Zibby Books?
Jane Delury: Thanks, Jen. That means a lot, since I’m a big fan of your writing! As for the publishing journey of Hedge, it began in the early days of the pandemic, when everything felt so up in the air. I’d been working on the novel for a couple of years and had done a revision based on notes from my first reader, Don Lee, aka my husband, a few writer friends, and my agent (the amazing Samantha Shea). Initially, Samantha and I sent the manuscript to the editor of my first book, The Balcony, at Little, Brown. Even though my experience with The Balcony had been great, it became clear that Hedge just wasn’t a match. I won’t lie—this was sad and destabilizing. Samantha and I were just starting to put Hedge into submission when she got a call from Leigh Newman, who was looking for book manuscripts. Leigh had edited my work before, and I love her fiction. She got back to us right away about wanting to acquire the novel, and about a start-up press soon to be founded by Zibby Owens. I jumped immediately (and not only because I hate being in submission!). I’m so glad I did, because it has been a perfect match.
JM: I was struck by how often I felt surprised by every turn in the narrative, to the point where I couldn’t really guess how Hedge was going to end, which is so difficult and really an accomplishment. So, are you a plotter or a pantser? Did you have an idea of where you wanted to wind up when you started writing/plotting?
JD: I’m definitely a pantser. I’m also a short story writer, and being a pantser is an easier thing to pull off in the small space of a story. Plotwise, I did know that Hedge would have a major shift in the middle when my protagonist, Maud, learns something about her daughter that’s been under the surface in the first part of the book. And I knew that revelation would disrupt the journey Maud believes she is on during that part of her life. Flannery O’Connor said, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” I was indeed surprised when I figured out exactly what Ella, Maud’s daughter, was hiding. Another thing I knew: Maud would learn to stand on her own feet by the end of the book. But how she would get there and what she would go through to get there was surprise after surprise, rewrite after rewrite. Once I had a solid first draft, I did plot more, though not very formally. I seem to be allergic to outlines.
JM: I agree—outlines make me feel tired, the same feeling I get when I’m in any part of Home Depot except the garden center. But I am envious of those photos people share online of their walls covered in color-coded post-it notes! I seem to recall you’re a meticulous at reviser, though—are there any particular problem areas that you find come up with your writing? How have you approached them over the years?
JD: I actually get tired in the garden center at Home Depot, because I want to buy every last plant (except the boxwood; ironically, I don’t like hedges). And yes, I am a meticulous—ferocious?—reviser. You’re envious of the outliners and I’m envious of the one-drafters who get it all right the first time. My biggest self-identified weak spot is excess description. I probably cut the equivalent of fifty pages of garden and history detail out of Hedge. I was so interested in everything I read about in my research. I wanted to cram it all in, and that can sandbag a story. Plus, sadly, it turns out that not everyone is as interested in gardens and gardening history as I am. It was my running joke with myself when I was first showing the manuscript to people and they’d suggest cutting description: writing this novel has made me realize that I’m boring! Anyway, I ended up giving the problem of feeling boring to Maud and that helped me connect to her more.
JM: I love the theme in Hedge that, for anyone, but especially for women, the road to hell often is paved with good intentions. Maud, the protagonist, spends a lot of time protecting the feelings of her children and her estranged husband, which often winds up to her own detriment (to put it mildly). At times, Maud reminded me of Lily Bart in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. Was Maud an amalgamation of any literary heroines or people? It really hit home that, as women, we tend to place others’ needs first so often that when we focus on our own desires, at best it’s viewed as a selfish indulgence and at worst a direct offense to those who are used to being the center of our world.
JD: I love The House of Mirth—in fact, I reread it while I was writing Hedge. While working on the novel, I went through a period of a year or so when I only read books written by women about women. There was a long run of Virginia Woolf, my favorite author—To The Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando. Also Magda Szabó, Toni Morrison, Olga Tokarczuk, Rachel Cusk, Nella Larsen, Sigrid Nunez. Many of the women characters in these novels struggle with their roles. I don’t think any of the novels or their protagonists literally influenced the character of Maud or the story itself, but I’m sure that chorus of women’s voices must have influenced me. To go back to Lily Bart, Maud is both liberated and not liberated at the start of Hedge. She’s a product of her rather conservative background. So I can see why you’d think of the protagonist from a novel written in the early 20th century.
JM: What I’ve always loved about your work is its ring of authenticity, from the French Village in your story “Transformation of the Matter,” to your depiction of Maud as a garden historian in Hedge, something about which I knew nothing but was completely mesmerized. Was it something you always wanted to write about, or was it something that you happened upon and thought it’d make a great backdrop for this story?
JD: Most of my stories are sparked by a place. In the case of “Transformation of Matter,” and all of the story/chapters in that first book, The Balcony, the place was a forest I spent time in while living in France. Hedge started to come to me in San Francisco’s Presidio. My family used to rent a house on the edge of the park and I went running in the mornings to Tennessee Hollow, where archeologists had unearthed the footprint of an adobe house that had once belonged to Juana Briones and her family. She was an entrepreneur, healer, and all-around tough, smart woman who also showed great compassion to her neighbors. In the second part of Hedge, Maud restores Juana Briones’ garden at Tennessee Hollow. That garden was actually the first thing I wrote about when drafting Hedge. The questions Tennessee Hollow raised in me about history, womanhood, and even marriage (Juana Briones left her abusive husband in a time when this was rare) started me on the course of the book. After, I had a lot to learn about gardening and garden history and was helped by experts at Monticello, the site of a massive historical garden restoration within driving distance of my home in Baltimore. And when I decided to set the first part of the novel at Montgomery Place at Bard College, I found another generous team to help me learn what I needed to know in order to inhabit Maud as she restores a Gilded Age garden.
JM: I loved the introduction of Alice in the later part of the novel. Circling back to your chorus of women’s voices, she has great Gertrude Stein vibes! Was Alice a pantsing moment, too? I was happy with what Maud and Alice ultimately offered each other and how intimacy can be shared in different ways among two people, but I was also very excited because, like much of the novel, I wasn’t sure where things were going for a bit.
JD: I’m a huge Gertrude Stein fan, so thank you! Alice takes no shit. She doesn’t perform for people in the way that women are often raised to do. She’s vaguely based on some women I know who aren’t afraid to say what they think, in particular in the company of men. And yes, I didn’t know where that relationship was headed either. I put Alice and Maud on a hiking trail together and let them talk. I thought of the two of them as being so different initially, but they showed me their similarities through the drafting of those scenes.
JM: I was surprised about how much anxiety I felt when Ella’s secret was revealed at the end of the first part. Growing up as a child of alcoholism, I always remember knowing that the bottom could drop out of someone’s recovery at any time (and how it often did). It felt very real, the uncertainty in Hedge, and also Maud and Peter trying their best, as parents and as partners. The lack of control, from the fallout of Maud’s choices to things she never saw coming, felt very convincing. Was this a theme you knew you wanted to explore?
JD: Hedge was described in one review as a roller coaster of a novel because yes, there’s a big emotional shift in the middle of the book, and the bottom does drop out from under Maud and from under the reader. In terms of theme, I wanted to explore the ways we can see our life as being one way in the present, then revise that view completely later on. During the first part of the novel at Montgomery Place, Maud is aware that something is going on with Ella, but she doesn’t know the nature or depth of the problem. Also, as someone with an anxiety disorder, I’m always afraid of the bottom falling out of my life. So writing this novel was probably also a way of my throwing myself into my biggest fears.
JM: What a great story about Hedge wound up at Zibby Books! And it’s getting great press, too. You teach in the MFA program at the University of Baltimore¾what advice do you give to new graduates about the publishing industry and process?
JD: I tell my students that you never know where your work will end up and that there’s no one path or answer. You’re up; you’re down. You think the opportunity that will change everything has appeared and then it disappears and probably wouldn’t have changed much anyway. The one thing you always have is your writing. That’s what must sustain you and provide enough emotional, spiritual, intellectual sustenance to keep you going through those ups and downs. That’s your primary relationship, and like any important relationship, it needs to be nurtured. With each rejection, write a new paragraph, and if you’re submitting your work enough, you’ll have a book manuscript in a year!
Jen Michalski is the author of three novels, The Tide King and Summer She Was Under Water (both Black Lawrence Press) and You’ll Be Fine (NineStar Press), a couplet of novellas, Could You Be With Her Now (Dzanc Books), and three collections of fiction, her latest of which is The Company of Strangers, which was published January 2023 by Braddock Avenue Books. She’s also the editor in chief of jmww.
JMWW 
Pingback: Events – Jane Delury·