Featured Interview With Hope Mills
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Hi, I’m Hope. I’m Lithuanian-Irish, raised in small towns in both countries. I moved to Dublin about five years ago to study Politics & Sociology; I graduated last year, but haven’t left the city yet, despite the atrocious housing crisis (Ireland is the most expensive country in the European Union to buy/rent a home). I’m currently training to become a therapist, so in three years I might be yours, who knows. I have two pet siblings, a French bulldog Cesar and a tabby cat Macy – I grew up with them, alongside Rex, who passed away in April. I was nine when he came into our lives, and he saved me. So, usually when I’m asked if I have pets, I like to say “I have three pets, but one is in heaven.”
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I have had an on-and-off fascination with books my whole life. When I was little, I was obsessed with Egyptology, and I’d go to the library to read up on pyramids and pharaohs. Then it was space, and the Amazon rainforest. As I grew up, I started reading a lot of Tumblr fanfiction, as well as mainstream YA authors like John Green. But I didn’t find my niche until I read darker work – particularly Charles Bukowski’s “Women”, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Faust”, and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” The latter two were mandatory reading in my dreary Eastern European school, and as a sad soul myself, I took to them like a moth to a flame. I had my first journal when I was around eight, but I didn’t start taking writing seriously as a pastime until I read those books in my late teens. If you read my author pages, they’ll say “Hope has been writing every day since she was fifteen.” This is approximate, but I did write every day back then as a form of escapism. Now, I sometimes go weeks without writing, until an idea comes to me, and I get lost on Microsoft Word for a few hours. That’s why “The Year of Rejection” took over two years to finish.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I read a lot of memoirs because I’m obsessed with understanding people. I am fascinated by universality and the human condition in general, so any life story I can dig my nails into is for me. In that vein, I’m most inspired by essayists Anaïs Nin and Annie Ernaux for their narrative story-telling. But I find inspiration pretty much everywhere; most recently, I’ve been re-writing my college essays to submit to literary magazines. When I was in undergrad, I would often think that I had written a pretty interesting paper, but no one would ever read it (I’m not sure my professors even read it in full). So, there’s one about how 21st century witchcraft practices correlate with femicide, and another about Middle Eastern subversive sexuality. I also find a lot of inspiration going through the musings of my Notes app, particularly because I kept extensive notes in secondary school.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
A prospective agent described “The Year of Rejection” as “honest and unflinching.” It’s a memoir centring on my trials in 2022, the worst year of my life. Through prose and psychoanalysis, I dig into depression, avoidant attachment, atypical anorexia, grief – an excavation of everything I had been and was going to continue being if I didn’t change. While sinking deeper into the abyss, I ravaged my childhood memories, exhuming my girlhood, parents’ divorce, and continent-wide moves. It started out as a journal I typed when I tired of writing by hand, but throughout two years and two months, a book took shape. The overarching theme didn’t come to me until my best friend Natalia recommended I read “All About Love” by Bell Hooks. I explore themes of straying and returning to love and the self in “The Year of Rejection” in homage to how much that book touched my soul.
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Outstanding book to read,highly recommend!