Interview with Hilary Plum
In Hilary Plum’s State Champ, Angela, a high-school state champion runner turned college dropout, is working as a receptionist at an abortion clinic when a “heartbeat law” criminalizes most abortions statewide. In the ensuing upheaval, her boss is arrested for providing illegal procedures and the clinic is shut down.
Angela has never been an activist or a model employee. But she decides to go on a hunger strike in the boarded-up clinic, to protest her boss's arrest and everything that's been lost, drawing on her skillset: the masochistic discipline of a runner, a history of self-destructive behavior, and a willingness to sleep on exam room tables, using their hygienic paper as her diary.
Angela's protest is solitary, enraged, and messy, but it mobilizes a group of people around her: an ex who's a local journalist looking for a good story, the everyday people the clinic once served, and most especially, a formidable anti-abortion activist named Janine.
Hilary Plum is a writer, editor, and teacher whose recent work includes the novel State Champ (out from Bloomsbury), the long poem Important Groups, and the essay collection Hole Studies. With Zach Savich she edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press. With Zach Peckham she co-hosts the podcast Index for Continuance. She teaches at Cleveland State University and serves as associate director of the CSU Poetry Center.
Sophia Kaufman: Your epigraph is a quote that reads: “We have different relationships to windows.” Where did this come from, and why were you compelled to use this for this novel? What’s your interpretation of it?
Hilary Plum: This line comes from a poem I love by Melissa Dickey, “Granted,” published by Rescue Press in the book The Lily Will. Rescue is run by my friend Caryl Pagel, and Melissa has been a friend a long time. Built into the novel are a number of stories and fragments of art I’ve borrowed from friends, mostly women. I wanted the book to reflect how we think together—women, girls, all those affected by hateful enforcements of gender, which is also everyone—and how we trade fragments that help us understand what threats we may face, what options there are.
I like the line for so many reasons—its oblique directness—and maybe especially because in the novel the boarded-up windows of the shut-down abortion clinic become contested sites. Also of course we use the word window to describe a pressurized period of time, like the amount of time you have, once you know you’re pregnant, to get an abortion. If you can. If someone hasn’t closed the window.
SK: Can you talk a little bit about what came first when conceptualizing this book? The clinic receptionist, the hunger strike, the state champ with an eating disorder, or something else?
HP: To me this book is above all about bodily autonomy. Abortion access is essential to bodily autonomy, and abortion exemplifies the decision-making we need to use, intimately and individually, to relate to our bodies and realize our autonomy, our freedom within real constraints. I have an older essay that says some of what I mean: “Abortion is Thinking. Thinking is Banned.”
I think I started this novel not with abortion, or not just with abortion, but with the hunger strike: a form of protest that draws, in desperation, on a dark practice of bodily autonomy as a final form of speech, when all other speech has been suppressed, gone unheard.
Hunger strikes are of course often used by people when imprisoned—recently and ongoingly in Guantanamo, in Palestine. One way they work is to call others into an agonizing, complicit form of relation with the suffering body. (Kevin Grant’s book Last Weapons is a key source I’d like to credit.) People don’t like to see people starve to death. This form of witness may activate us—as it is now activating people as we witness genocidal famine in Gaza; a wave of hunger strikes has arisen to cry out against this atrocity.
In my writing I keep returning to “protest” as subject: its forms, its ethics, its relation to art, its individual vs. collective modes, how its futility and efficacy and potential for meaning are caught up in each other, awaiting understanding from some future time, place, person. So in this way State Champ extends from my previous work. Yet while I often write in the first-person, this novel is more “voice-driven,” as we say, than my previous books. I felt that putting this particular character—her humor, her anger, her limitations, her history as an elite athlete whose career ended in anorexia: both power and its loss—in conversation with post-Roe problems of bodily autonomy might get me somewhere new.
SK: When and why did you decide to have the structure of the book be a letter written - on hygienic exam paper, no less - to John, her ex? At what point in your process did that solidify as a narrative device?
HP: I have spent—wasted—so much of my life thinking of myself in terms that privilege men. How would this man think of me? In my head, to myself, I am often talking to—or talking in front of, if that makes sense—a man whose opinion matters. It could be because I choose to value his opinion, or just because he has power over me. Like, he’s my boss. I’ve come to realize that I don’t have access to myself without this inclusion of the power of men. My knowledge of myself is still mediated by their empowered knowledge. I keep needing to know what they think in order to know what I think, because what they think still determines the terms of my access to the world. This is so sick, but it’s common. Angela is also having this problem. That’s why when she tries talking to herself, she does it by talking to John. She keeps talking to him even though she can also see the problems with relying on him, or just the problems with him. Angela is pretty independent (and lonely), but she keeps looking for a gaze that will finally tell her who she is. I wanted to write this problem to try and write a way out of it, at least for myself.
SK: When describing the different types of anti-abortion activists, Angela draws a distinction from some of the more abrasive groups who carry graphic signs and shout profanities, and Janine, an anti-abortion activist who, Angela has noticed, chooses a more seemingly genteel approach. Angela says, “Repent whores were facebook, Janine was instagram.” It feels instinctively self-evident to me, but can you explain how you arrived at this sentence? By the end of the book, do you think Angela believes the same thing?
I wanted this novel to highlight the fact of women leaders in the anti-abortion movement. The driving force behind the heartbeat law here in Ohio, for example, was a woman. That the context is patriarchy doesn’t mean it’s just men who are doing the violence. There’s obviously a lot of power and reward available to women who are down with the patriarchy and willing to do its work.
Recent years have seen the rise of Janine-adjacent anti-abortion activists—including some younger, even more stylish, Instagram-ready versions. Women who are slick, professional, Fox News-esque, polished messaging, trying to sell younger women on right-wing life. E.g. the recent waves of trad wife and MAHA content…
So Facebook vs. Instagram is meant as a kind of shorthand, signaling older vs. younger, shouty vs. profesh, old right vs. new right, different forms of right-wing cultural power and aesthetics. State Champ doesn’t pin itself down firmly in time and place—it’s in the Rust Belt, the Midwest, it seems like Cleveland, it’s now-ish. But it’s also a bit open, a fable representing what’s happening differently and multiply and continually across the US. Novels need to be durable and open to readers across time and place. So they can’t be hyperspecific in their references. It’s a challenge. I tend to offer a few proper nouns as orientation, then let it drift open. Hopefully this binary (Facebook /Instagram) will make enough sense to enough people, so that it invokes and provokes thought about the evolving rhetorics and forms of misogyny and the US right.
SK: Angela mostly seems to shrug off the fact that she doesn’t have a lot of friends, that her coworkers of several years at the clinic are often dismissive of her, that even Dr. M at some point tells Angela that if it were up to her, Angela would be fired. Angela herself admits that before the clinic closed, she wasn’t even that good at interacting with the clinic’s patients. In short, there’s nothing in her life leading up to the clinic closing and sentencing of Dr. M that would have suggested she’s the type of person to take on a cause and flirt with losing her life for it, or do something that anyone would admire her for, and yet here she is. So much literary criticism and discourse - not to mention contemporary fiction writ large - has had a fascination with “unlikeable women narrators” in the past several years. One could argue that Angela, who is perhaps disliked by and rather inscrutable to many people in her life, could fit into this lineage (though I happen to like her). At what point in writing the book did her wry voice and prickly personality solidify for you?
In fiction I love the not-quite-realistic. It’s a vital way to make sense of our overwhelming, barely thinkable world. I agree, Angela doesn’t seem like the activist type, even to herself. The extremity of her actions may not be believable, even to herself. I like to look at (or imagine) how people may surprise themselves and each other. Where are the ruptures, the impulsive rush toward some new opening, some transformation. In earlier interviews about this novel I’ve said that I wanted to write about someone who was a “bad employee” because I wanted to learn more about being a bad employee. I was embarrassed to have been a good employee so often, embarrassed that I was still embarrassed about times when I’d ducked responsibilities that, at least intellectually, I kinda think should be ducked, questioned, undermined. I’ve gone for order more than mess, and what I’ve learned about mess wasn’t exactly voluntary. Angela has got two feet planted in mess. So I was writing to learn.
A question Angela’s character raises is about the relationship between intention, motivation, and effect. People often have good intentions, pure motivations, but bad effects. That fact is painful, disorienting, disturbs our sense of how ethics should work. Sometimes people have fairly limited intentions and great effects (like, they are motivated to do something for their own reasons and it benefits others—this is great, actually, but culturally it’s valued less than altruistic motives). American culture loves sincerity. Sincerity isn’t a virtue. People do harm sincerely all the time. They genuinely believe the bullshit they are saying. They genuinely think this harmful thing they’re about to do is actually good. They might be lying to themselves, or the sincerity might go all the way down. Angela’s like a flip version of this. She does not have that high an opinion of intentions and motivations, even her own. Angela’s a pessimist. She likes people (sort of) and she doesn’t think people can do that much for each other and she doesn’t think people usually succeed at things. But she knows we’re not powerless either, and anyway we’re ourselves.
About the trend of “unlikeable” women narrators, I’m into it. Though I’m maybe surprised (worried?) to have joined a trend. I think that, like most things that seem—or are sold as—feminist, this phenomenon can be feminist or not. We have to really read these characters and how they work and how they’re received. Unlikability can be just another spectacle offered up to the gaze, another invitation for discipline. Or, another way that women duck responsibility for our participation in structures that oppress us, oppress others. Or, unlikability can be a new site of power, disruptive invitation into a new set of values. What’s new is going to seem alienating, even weird. I was happy when The Cut called this novel “weird.”
SK: At the end of this book, we’re left with pretty much zero answers. Did you always know you wanted to leave things so open ended?
HP: I hesitate to say too much about the ending but, yeah, it is ambiguous! Certainly in a technical sense. To some extent readers have to decide for themselves what they think happened and why. This kind of ending is more controversial, of course. It’s not as “satisfying” and some people won’t like it. On Goodreads e.g. some people definitely don’t like it.
Paradoxically, I’d say that I like open endings because I love detective fiction. Detective fiction relies structurally on a clear singular answer at the end, what we’re hurtling toward: whodunit. But what’s meaningful about that ending is that it can’t totally finally provide justice, it can’t undo harm. There’s a remainder, an excess, a haunting at the end of each case that the detective has to bear. The answer can’t justify the reality and the violence of the question. I’m drawn to the lack of resolution that surrounds resolution like an aura.
The plot of State Champ could logically only have a few endings. How I chose to end the novel navigates that fact, and ideally tries to invite the reader in, so that we can each witness what we want.
SK: One line that I can’t stop thinking about, even though it’s a bit of a throwaway on the second page, is Angela saying, “You can save more lives drunk than you ever dreamed.” Can you talk a bit about what is going on here under the surface for her?
HP: Ha, thanks, I don’t know if I have more to add! But uhhhh I will observe that our culture really eats up accounts of women artists/intellectuals who virtuously got sober, had kids, settled down. A lot of prominent women writers end up working in this space. I do not enjoy the cultural appetite for this content. Of course I do support sobriety for whoever benefits from it—I am a recovered anorexic, I respect the lethality of addiction. But I don’t like the regressive cultural demand, from women especially, for virtue and self-control and abstention and denial of appetite. I guess I too think you can save more lives drunk than you ever dreamed.
SK: Your acknowledgements page notes some books that were important to you in researching and writing this book. Are there any other books - or any pieces of media - that you feel to be influential to your writing process or career that would perhaps make it on to a “works not cited” page? Are there any people that you look up to when it comes to finding ways to handle living day-to-day with the rollback of reproductive rights and the overall bleak state of everything? Finally: is there anything about the rollout of your book that has surprised you in any way - questions you've been expecting to be asked, or elements of the book that you thought people would pick up on, that you feel are getting missed, etc.? Is there anything else about the book you'd like to share here that's been missing from the press cycle or conversations, or anything new that's struck you since finishing and publishing the book?
HP: Thanks for this kind question. I tend to gain inspiration from very specific bits of culture that get stuck in my mind and insist on their own mystery. For this book, the way Peaches sings “huh what right uh” in “Fuck the Pain Away” on The Teaches of Peaches really got me (I wrote about it some here). That kind of thing isn’t research into the subject matter, but it’s research into how to be, what art can do. My time spent thinking about Sinéad O’Connor’s 1992 protest is part of this book too.
In terms of reception, the rollout: each book has its own set of anxieties. For this book, I wasn’t sure if its relationship to realism would work for everyone. Like, it isn’t a totally “realistic” account of working in healthcare or an abortion clinic. It’s stripped-down, both “ripped from the headlines” and a fable. That’s not so unusual but of course it could ring false for someone. Like, someone who works at an abortion clinic might think, why did this writer make this choice, that’s not right. And that would be a bummer because that’s a reader I’d hope to serve. I haven’t heard any feedback like that yet. It’s probably underestimating readers to have that fear, because people know art is doing something else and they want art to do what art can do. But fiction writers need to live in a little fear because we’re always diving into other people’s lives and jobs, and then making this intricate imaginative thing out of that material. Mostly the response is appreciative, affirming (which is how I feel too when I read fiction that’s close to something in my life—there are only a few specific kinds of choices that would disappoint me; mostly I’m really glad for people’s thoughts and connections). But as a writer you can’t control the response. Some fear is healthy. And then, once it’s out there, the book belongs to its readers, not you.
As for works not cited: years ago I watched a documentary about abortion doctors in the US who perform “late” abortions, third trimester. I’m thinking it must have been this one, After Tiller (meaning, after the assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller in 2009). What I remember (vaguely!) is one woman doctor who carefully, compassionately explained a specific case in which she’d declined to perform a third-trimester procedure. She performed many many second- and third-trimester procedures and it seemed really rare that she declined. As I recall the reason was that, after talking a few times to the patient about what had caused the delay, the situation just didn’t sit right with her. I don’t mean—and she didn’t mean—that this patient was wrong to seek an abortion, or was a bad person. In my memory she explained it in terms of her relation to herself. Somehow this moment—especially because it was unusual in this doctor’s practice—became for me a vivid if complicated illustration of the matrix of care and human specificity and dignity and privacy in which abortion takes place. Each of us makes our own decisions, even as our decisions matter deeply to others. And we have to trust our guts, we have to live in and answer to our own selves. Although this was a case of not providing an abortion, somehow it illustrated powerfully both how we’re caught up with one another and why we each need the freedom to choose for ourselves.