Anna Bailey was born in Bristol in 1995 and spent her childhood in Gloucestershire. She studied Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and wanted to become a journalist, but ended up moving to Colorado and becoming a Starbucks barista instead. In 2018 she returned to the UK, where she enrolled in the Curtis Brown Creative Novel-writing course and wrote her first novel, Tall Bones, inspired by her experience of living in small-town America. Here, she chats about the book, lockdown hobbies and five unusual facts about herself.
How much planning do you do before writing?
Loads, and also not a lot! I had several early drafts of a novel that was a bit like Tall Bones, so I already had a decent sense of the characters and the setting, which gave me the confidence to just sit down and write for about 15k words before I realised I was going to have to actually plot this out properly. The novel I’m writing now required quite a bit of research on various topics, so there was definitely a lot of planning involved this time around.
What’s more important to you, character or setting?
Characters absolutely have to drive a story, and I can’t start writing until I have a clear sense of who they are, but sometimes a good setting can also be a character in and of itself. For me, the setting has to feel just as immersive and compelling as my characters, otherwise it feels as though I’m writing about people performing a play with cheap production values!
“Reading Elizabeth Strout’s books really helped me examine what I was feeling and how I could use those feelings in my own work.”
What kind of books do you like to read?
I’ve been reading a lot of Alice Munro lately, and before that I read all of Elizabeth Strout’s work. I don’t have anything very clever to say about that, I just really enjoy their writing, I think they’re both incredible. I devoured Strout’s books while coming to terms with this big grief in my life, which was also when I was writing Tall Bones, and that really helped me examine what I was feeling and how I could use those feelings in my own work.
What are your hobbies?
I like watching horror films and making my own jam. During lockdown my partner and I started writing short stories together and I would illustrate them, and that really kept me from going bonkers, so I still like to do that in my spare time.
How did you come to writing?
I studied Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and wanted to be a journalist, but I ended up moving to America and becoming a Starbucks barista instead. Then in 2018 I came back to the UK where I enrolled in the Curtis Brown Creative novel-writing course and that’s where I started writing Tall Bones.
List five unusual things about you.
I’m very superstitious. I collect sea shanties. Most of my furniture comes from dead people’s garage sales. I used to skateboard. My dream trip would be to take the Trans-Siberian Railway to visit Lake Baikal.
Twitter: @annafbailey
Instagram: @annabaileywrites
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by Anna Bailey
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