Meet Emma Hardy author of Periodic Bitch
- Allen & Unwin
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
In our debut spotlight series, we introduce you to your next favourite authors. This month, meet Emma Hardy!
About Emma
A&U: What did you want to be when you were a child?
EH: Other than a short phase of wanting to be a “stunt bride” (not much of a job market, unfortunately), I wanted to be an actor, then quickly a director. I wanted to have control over the stories being told. I think deep down I always wanted to be a writer, but I assumed that was the job that everyone wanted.
A&U: What is your Roman Empire? (A thing you think about far too often)
EH: I am always thinking about animals. Always, always, always.
There is this great piece of advice from Joy Williams that every short story should have an animal within it to give its blessing. I agree, and I love stories where animals have their own agenda: they do not exist simply to service the plot.
A&U: If you could travel anywhere in the world instantly, where would you go?
EH: Today, Gibraltar. Tomorrow, perhaps Brazil.
A&U: What are you reading right now or looking forward to reading this year?
EH: I am currently reading Flesh. I am looking forward to the fourth volume in On the Calculation of Volume, which just came out. I am also looking forward to reading so many wonderful debut books that come out this year!
About Writing
A&U: Tell us about your writing journey; did you always want to be an author?
EH: I never explicitly imagined myself as a writer. I just wrote. I imagined that everyone wanted to be a writer, anyway.
A&U: Tell us about your writing process. Are you a planner, pantser – something in between?
EH: Something between. I write and write until a structure reveals itself to me, and then plan and plan until I figure out how to make it all work together.
For Periodic Bitch, discovering the structure was a joyous moment. Suddenly, the story unfolded for me. I had so many fragments. I had a whole spreadsheets of moments, ideas stories, research - everything. Then I stumbled across this idea that a story could be so much more than a traditional hero’s journey. It could be fragments, it could be meanders, it could be a spiral!
Thinking of my story as a spiral just unlocked something in me. It made sense. But I think I needed to have all those fragments first, just to get there.
A&U: Did you have a writing playlist for your book, and if so, what was on it?
EH: Oh goodness, I could listen to anything once I am in the zone. Mambo No. 5. Gregorian chanting. Anything. While writing this book, I listened to a lot of Dijon and a lot of the music my partner was making at the time.
I’ve actually put together a bit of a playlist of songs that meant something to me during that time. You can find it on Spotify.
A&U: Do you have any special quirks when you write? (A certain mug you must use, a candle you have to light etc.)
EH: I’ve dipped in and out of so many quirks in the past, but am a firm believer that you just need to sit down and do it. So whatever will get me sitting down that day is my quirk: coffee, incense, a timer… I can be terribly lazy and so am always looking for new ways to trick myself into working.
A&U: If you could give some words of wisdom to yourself from when you first started writing this book, what would it be?
EH: Read Meander, Spiral, Explode. Now!
About the book
A&U: Where did the initial spark of inspiration for Periodic Bitch come from?
EH: I never set out to write this book. Rather, I found myself obsessed with all the ideas that surround pre-menstrual illness. I was obsessed with the ways women had been treated by medical institutions: how their anger is pathologised, how their real pain is ignored.
Another way of telling this story is that it was sparked by anger. I wanted the world to be different, and I needed to write my way to understanding what that difference really looked like.
Eventually I realised that the truest version of this story needed me in it. I needed to be embodied on the page. That was what was most true, and most real. Then the writing started.
A&U: Share a little bit about your journey to publication. Were you querying for a while? Or did it all happen very fast.
EH: It all happened very quickly for me. I think I had the dream experience.
I’d heard so many horror stories that, after I sent my first ever query, I turned my email off straight afterwards. It would be months before I heard back! I didn’t want to obsess over checking it!
Turns out I should have: my (now) agent responded to my query within an hour. I didn’t realise until two days later. I felt ditzy, but I think she has forgiven me now.
I feel very, very lucky. The rest went pretty smoothly. Other than proofreading, which I am shocking at.
A&U: Is there a part of Periodic Bitch that made you cry, laugh, or scream while writing it?
EH: There are parts of it that I still find hard to read over. But I think my favourite scene to write was the prologue. I wrote it after showing my partner the first draft of the book. He said it needed more tension: I needed to make him a bad guy! So I did.
Later, he picked up an advance reading copy, read the prologue and gasped: “You can’t say that!”
I think he was joking.
A&U: What is one thing you would like people to take away from reading Periodic Bitch?
EH: I hope that people feel less mad in the wrong ways, and more comfortable being mad in the ways that work for them.
Periodic Bitch is available now from your book retailer of choice.
Periodic Bitch
by Emma Hardy
A memoir of menstruation, madness and monsters.
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