[In the interview below, Shea discusses various aspects of Hula, including its composition, her new work, and her literary influences.]

Lisa Shea on being called a new novelist:

I like the whole idea of first things—first novel, first poetry, first short story collections—because they're more transparent works and you can see what the writer was up to. Besides being called a first novelist, I can be called a failed poet. I think inside I feel much more like a failed poet than a first-time novelist.

Lisa Shea, in an interview with Elizabeth Manus, in The San Francisco Review of Books, June-July, 1994.

[Giroux]: Numerous critics have praised Hula's emotional honesty, noting that the book is dedicated "to my sisters." To what extent is Hula autobiographical?

[Shea]: Like a lot of first novels it is and it isn't autobiographical. I think that the feelings that inform the...