Fondue Party on my Head
Hall, Carrie (2009-03-28)
>>INTERVIEWER: Start with your name. 
>>CARRIE HALL: Okay. My name is Carrie Hall. I am a writer of fiction and I am a teacher of creative writing and of composition. I am also a graduate student of both of those two things. I am a person that started reading pretty early because my brother was just a little bit older than me so I learned how to read; he taught me how to read really young. I always loved it. It is interesting to be in a field where a lot of people really hate it. I also always really loved writing. Some of my students, you know, they really hate reading. I mean, to them they feel excluded from it or that they are sort of being told that they are dumb a lot of times in academic reading. They don't realize how much reading they do outside of the classroom. 
>>CARRIE HALL: When I was five or six I wrote a poem, my first poem, called Fondue Part on my Head. I didn't know what Fondue was but I liked the sound of the word. I was super into rhyming. I am really outing myself as a geek here. I spoke in rhyme for like three months, driving my mother insane. I guess, I maybe always thought of myself as a reader. I always wrote but -- I don't know, when I turned about 27 or 28 -- I decided that I had to make the decision if I really to be a writer for real or whatever the hell that means. Or, if I wanted to just actually make money and get a real job. I thought about it and went for writer then wrote -- this may sound easy; it wasn't -- but I wrote a book, a novel, which was the best experience of my life. Except the new novel is even better to write; I don't know if it is to read.  
>>INTERVIEWER: I have heard you talk about three different themes: your brother and him as far as an impact on you when you would read, that first poem and then you making the decision to be a writer. Can you elaborate on any of those?
>>CARRIE HALL: Yeah. Let's see. 
>>INTERVIEWER: Tell us a story how one of those things came about, beginning to end. 
>>CARRIE HALL: Well, I guess learning to read -- I remember pretty clearly learning to read actually, which is funny because I don't remember very many things about being a kid. But I remember learning to read, really a lot. My dad used to draw books with our pictures in them, my brother and me, like we were the star of the book. I think he had read somewhere that that helps kids learn to read. But then also, I think, because my brother is so close to me in age. You know, it was easier for him to teach me how to read than it was for my dad, for example, because my brother would just go "Car. Car. Car" My dad would go "Look at the picture of the car. Isn't it a pretty car?" So, that is how I think it came about a little more easily.  Then, my family was really pretty into reading; we just read a lot. But I don't know. Is that what you are asking for? I guess maybe I should have come up with a brilliant literacy narrative. 
>>INTERVIEWER: No, you are doing fine. You are doing fine. Is there anything else you want to tell us about?
>>CARRIE HALL: No, it is just now I am really interested in trying to help people, just maybe for selfish reason, love reading as much as I do. I just go lucky that that was sort of given to me off the bat.  
>>INTERVIEWER: That is why you chose to be a writing teacher?
>>CARRIE HALL: That is why I chose to be a writing teacher. I need people to read my stuff. 
[Both laugh]
>>CARRIE HALL: That's why, really, if it gets down to it. 
>>INTERVIEWER: Alright, well we have you on record. 
>>CARRIE HALL: Alright, thank you.