An Interview with Annie Hartnett

The Road to Tender Hearts won the 2025 New England Book Award and received various starred reviews. How did the concept for this book come to be?

I wanted to write a book about a man who reads something in the newspaper that makes him want to change his life. And I wanted to write about children and a cat who can predict death! Pancakes the cat is based on Oscar, a real nursing home cat. Oscar predicted over 100 deaths when he was alive.

In the acknowledgements, you mention taking all your worries “about not being a good enough parent or a generally capable enough person” and putting it all in a book. How do you approach developing a theme throughout a novel? Do you always know what you want to say before you start it?

I definitely don’t know what I want to say! Not at the start anyway. I knew I had a lot of anxiety, generally, and about parenting specifically. I use Terry Pratchett’s mantra, “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” I try to tell myself a good story and don’t worry so much about what it’s about. Later, I work on those things and often add big emotional scenes.

Your books are filled with vibrant characters. What is your process for coming up with characters? What advice would you have for someone interested in writing solid characters like yours?

A trick for building a character is to cover three things:

1. A brief description of appearance
2. A job
3. A hobby

For example: Milly, a blue-haired woman in her 70s. Milly owns a gun shop on Route 16 and collects butterflies.

I immediately think Milly hates her grandchildren and blames children for most of the world’s problems. She lives with her husband, but they haven’t spoken in years. Now we have tension, and the start of a story! Okay, no one else use that, I might use it.

Now, if it is a minor character and you don’t have time to get into who they are, have the job and the hobby be in tension with each other. Like in Unlikely Animals, I had a teenage basketball player (not really a job, but as close to a job a teenager gets), who is also into witchcraft. She has bleached blond hair, eyeliner, and on the court, she hisses and scratches players. With those details, she is a full person in my head, and I know how she’d act in most situations.

The Road to Tender Hearts straddles a line between dark and humorous. How do you approach that balance?

I have a morbid sense of humor, and I’m a pretty mischievous and playful person… Sometimes I take a joke too far, and my agent or editor will say, “What is wrong with you?” But most of the time I get to keep my jokes. The tone of the books is really my personality on the page.

Your novels often include a whiff of the otherworldly. How does this “magical” aspect affect how you approach your story?

I really struggle with this, to be honest! I never know how much magic I can get away with. But I put it in because I wish there was magic in the real world, and it allows me to signal to readers: Don’t take this too seriously. It frees me up to go a little crazier in plot than I might otherwise.

Your stories often feature a child’s point of view, like Elvis in Rabbit Cake. What draws you to that perspective?

I love writing children, because their dialogue is always so good! They can be weird or say exactly what they’re thinking when an adult never would. I especially love writing sibling dialogue, because siblings can be so mean to each other, but there is an undercurrent of love.

All three of your novels feel wonderfully textured. What is your favorite part of writing a novel?

I love to write little details that make me laugh or surprise me! I also love when the plot finally comes together, and I get the feeling I might get to pull off the big magic trick—making the threads come together into a climactic scene.

The publishing industry can become an intimidating thing in the minds of writers. What was your publishing journey like? Is there anything that you wish you’d known before starting out?

I queried my agent Katie Grimm at Curtis Brown thirteen years ago; she plucked me from the slush pile, and she’s been a great friend and advocate ever since. I’ve had two great editors: Masie Cochran at Tin House and Sara Weiss at Ballantine. I’ve been lucky, but here is what I would tell someone just starting out: Edit like crazy before you go looking for an agent. And go with the agent who has the most edits for your book, not the one who promises she can sell it right away. This is the hill I will die on. There are so many books I’ve seen get close to publishing but ultimately get passed on because the writer didn’t keep editing a little longer. Give it another few months to cook in the oven.

You and Tessa Fontaine started The Accountability Workshop. What has that been like? What has surprised you the most?   

The workshop was born because Tessa and I realized writers go through periods when they need consistent community but not necessarily endless feedback while ideas are still cooking. With a novel, you need to play around in the dark for a while, without getting feedback that is likely to confuse you. But it’s terrible to do it all alone! We keep people on track via daily emails, bi-weekly meetings, plus monthly speakers, writing sessions, and different tricks to keep people going. We also run an annual retreat in New Hampshire. The most surprising thing has been the community we’ve built, the friendships that have developed, and the work that has gotten done.

And finally, what is a story that made you feel excited to write?

When I read George Saunders’s Sea Oak and Aimee Bender’s The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, both given to me by my professor Chris Kennedy, that’s when I wanted to become a writer. Chris Kennedy, that class, and those stories changed my life.