Behind the Masthead: Allegra Hyde

This week, we get the behind-the-scenes on prose editor, Allegra Hyde.

Lauren Mickey: You’re a prose editor at HFR – but what does this mean? What are your main responsibilities?

Allegra Hyde: In the words of that strabismic wonder, Jean Paul Sartre, “There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”

LM: Are there any writers, musicians, animals, theories, etc. that have all of your attention and/or admiration, as of late?

AH: I like unicorns and post-structuralism.

LM: What are some techniques, themes, etc. that you typically focus on - or return to - in your writing?

AH: In retrospect, I’ve written quite a few stories about loneliness. Also about people making immoral choices. Also about utopian communes. And, for reasons unknown to me, I have a difficult time avoiding the word “erinaceous.” It just slips in – burrows in, you might even say – so that it has appeared in almost every story I have ever composed. Sometimes I’ll use the word several times a page, and only catch it in revision. Maddening? Yes, and yet it is a comfort as well. To be trailed by a word the way one might be followed by a starving cat, or a robber, eventually becomes more of a ritual than an annoyance. You end up feeding the cat some tuna that you happened to be carrying in your pocket. You give the robber your grandmother’s sapphire necklace. Everyone is happy. You feel less alone.

LM: How do you describe HFR to people who ask you about it? 

AH: 7″ by 10″ by 1/2″.

LM: What song(s) do you have playing on repeat lately? 

AH: Iggy Azalea's "Fancy."

LM: Has working at HFR changed the way you read and/or write?

AH: Yes.

LM: What do you think the color of your aura is? (I know nothing about auras, and I'm pretty sure that they're not self-prescribed, but whatever…) 

AH: Leopard print.

LM: What do you hope for your someday-legacy to be?

AH: A novel – or ideally, multiple novels – that occasionally appear on the shelves of musty bookstores, or as kindling for an expurgatory bonfire in some terrible dystopian future. If people feel the need to my books I will have done something right.

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Allegra Hyde’s writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Missouri Review, New England Review, Southwest Review, Passages North, Chattahoochee Review, and North American Review, among others. She curates similes at www.allegrahyde.com.