"Meet the Teacher" offers a quick introduction to The Porch's Teaching Writers. Hilary Bell has been teaching for The Porch since Fall 2023, and was a student in our classes for years before that. She founded the reading + music series Mirror House, which we kept going while Bell pursued her MFA in Creative Writing. Bell, a Nashville native, is an ASME National Magazine Award Finalist, and her work has appeared in American Short Fiction and elsewhere. She holds an M.F.A. in fiction from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught creative writing at The University of Iowa, where she was a postgraduate screenwriting fellow. Bell will bring her MFA and screenwriting expertise to The Porch when she teaches "Crafting the Plan: MFA Prep" on May 18, 2024, and "Learning to Eavesdrop: On Writing Better Dialogue" on June 1. She'll also read from her work at Mirror House on June 28 at Tempo in Nashville, alongside good friends The Styrofoam Winos, Justin Taylor, and Cassie Berman. —ed.
Tell us about a book you've recently read and enjoyed. Justin Taylor’s Reboot came out last month, and I’ve already read it twice. I love this novel for the same reasons I love all of Justin's work. Every line is sonically interesting and musical; every reference matters, and it’s as smart as it is big hearted. It’s also a deeply funny book—and I mean actually funny.
Other recent faves include Jamel Brinkley’s Witness, Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, and Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses.
The best dialogue happens when you stop worrying—when you just let it rip.
What’s one craft book or essay you return to again and again?
Garielle Lutz’s “The Sentence is a Lonely Place.” It’ll crack your brain open in the best way. Whenever I recommend this essay, I think of a quote I love from Lorrie Moore: “When a piece of prose hits rhythms older, more familiar and enduring than itself, it seemed then briefly to belong to nature, or at least to the world of music, and that’s when it seemed to me ‘artistic’ and good.”
What is your favorite writing rule to break?
I don’t know if I have a favorite! Imo, the only rule that matters is don’t be boring.
Music while writing: Y/N?
Y! I do my best writing right after I wake up, before the junk of the day invades my imagination, and I need to start my morning in more or less the same way to stay in the zone. I drink the same coffee and listen to the same instrumental playlist while I read over what I wrote the day before. Once I’m deeper into a project and really starting to flesh things out, I’ll alternate between long stretches of silence and playing the same deranged song over and over. Sometimes the music is too embarrassing to mention; sometimes it’s stuff like this: May '24 Playlist.
What do you love most about teaching writing?
I love watching my students find the confidence to take risks in their work, to see what lights them up.
Tell us why you pitched “Learning to Eavesdrop: On Writing Better Dialogue”?
I think a lot of new writers put too much pressure on their dialogue to move the story forward or advance the plot, which leads to a lot of flat, unnatural conversations between characters. The best dialogue happens when you stop worrying about all that—when you just let it rip. You’ll probably prune it back later, but one or two sleeper lines will reveal something that surprises you.
Share something that has inspired your creativity lately, other than a book.
The movie La Chimera, directed by Alice Rohrwacher. There’s just no one making movies that feel as alive and joyfully digressive as hers always do. I love everything she makes, but this new one is pure magic.
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