Dr. Joyce Hinnefeld is a published author of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Some of her published works include “The Beauty of Their Youth” and “In Hovering Flight.” She is an Emerita professor of English at Moravian, retiring in 2022. In addition to writing, she works for Shining Light, a non-profit organization focused on mental health and social-based programs for incarcerated individuals, and is on the Bethlehem Area Public Library board. She is also a member of the Lehigh Valley Friends Meeting, a Quaker society.
Her newest novel, “The Dime Museum,” explores poetry and art, inherited wealth spanning generations, and the psychological portraits of its characters. Described as a “novel in stories,” it intersects the lives of a diverse cast of characters through different countries and cities in the 20th and 21st centuries.
What inspired you to write “The Dime Museum” specifically as a “novel in stories?”
Some years ago, in 2017, maybe 2018, I advised an independent study with a student who read collections of linked short stories and then wrote her own. I knew that I really liked that form, and I wanted to try it out. I was very fond of the writer Joan Silver, her work, particularly her book called ‘Fools,’ and so I thought I would be doing that [form]. It turned out that what I ended up with were some pieces that felt like standalone short stories, some felt more like chapters in a novel.
Books that I call cyclical works of cyclical fiction: That was the best I could come up with. I like that better than [calling them] linked story collections. They aren’t necessarily strictly chronological. They jump back and forth. Part of the pleasure in reading them is solving the puzzle, because it’s not a straightforward beginning, middle, and end read.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of writing a novel?
I wrote a note that says “figuring it out,” and in my experience, I’ll have general ideas about what I’m diving into with some characters, maybe a triggering incident, or a significant plot moment. I’m often more character-driven than plot-driven in what I write.
It takes a while to find the best way to tell a story and to find the voice for what’s best for the point of view. You’ve got to figure out how to make a novel happen, and when you feel like you’ve solved that and you know how you want to do it, that’s just a really exciting point in the process. You feel like you’ve figured out the way to tell it the structure. It’s more than structure, though. It’s voice, use of time, and point of view of all those things.
Could you tell me about the challenges that you had in writing or publishing your novel?
Time is always complicated. I’m retired from teaching, but I’m doing other work, and my husband has some significant health issues, so I’m really caring for him and arranging a lot of things for him. I’m not always the most disciplined person, so getting myself to do the work [writing] I need to do is always a struggle for me. Publishing is just really hard now, and I think it’s probably harder than ever to publish literary fiction. There’s a pretty small market for it, and publishing is increasingly a big-money business.
It’s very tough to get your book published by a publishing company, even a small press, which means I don’t really make money, and it somewhat limits the publicity that my book is likely to receive.
I would say that if you want to write, you should be ready to just do it, because you love doing it, and to learn to be kind of innovative about ways to get your work out to the people you want to read it. I love writing, and I love the thrill of publishing work, so I never want to tell somebody not to try. Be okay with it not being lucrative, maybe with another job in addition to writing.
What has life post-Moravian looked like for you?
Still busy! Soon after I retired, my husband experienced a bad fall, and that’s when everything ramped up. By fall 2023, a year after I retired, that had really taken over my life, but it’s working out, and we have some good help. I’m working now with a group called Shining Light, a wonderful organization that does a type of education. It’s not really academic education so much as it is rooted in the tenets of positive psychology. It’s probing more deeply into the self, coming to recognize one’s character strengths, and if you’re incarcerated, you think you don’t have any.
I got started with them as one of their creative writing people, and that’s still what I work on when I facilitate classes. They have a magazine called The Loop, and I come up with writing prompts and read the submissions. I’m busy with the Bethlehem Public Library Board, and I feel pretty passionate about libraries. I’m also a member of the local Quaker meeting, so I’ve been busy with that wonderful group as well.
I noticed that you mentioned Ezra Pound a few times in your novel. Is there any particular reason why you chose for your main character to take an interest in his writing?
I initially was intrigued with starting this book with two people with local connections: Wallace Stevens, a poet from Reading, Pennsylvania, and Albert Barnes, the famous art collector from Philadelphia, who established the Barnes collection, now a beautiful museum in Center City, Philadelphia.
They were both of the same era, as modernists from the early to mid-20th century. I was intrigued by them as individuals, but also what I thought about telling the story of the women in their lives, though there wasn’t a lot I could find. I decided I’ll write a fictional account of them and try to give voice to who they could have been. There’s an element of that in the book. What I finally ended up doing was creating a college professor, a woman who I don’t think was like me exactly, but I gave her some preoccupations and some of my quirks. Along the way, if you’re thinking about poetic and artistic modernists, you’re going to come across Ezra Pound.
He’s a complicated literary figure, and he’s an adult poet amongst fans of American poetry, but he was a fascist. He did these crazy radio casts and was ragingly anti-Semitic. He was held, arrested as an enemy of the state, brought back, and spent years in a mental institution in New Jersey. Even then, people were still enamored with him. They really believed in him and his work.
I created this character, Maude, who is a lesbian before it was possible to even own that identity; she longed to be a poet, but was dirt poor, and her performing life is not really going anywhere. She becomes a really grounding central figure, and the title story, The Dime Museum, is her story, as she’s connected to this wealthy pharmaceutical family through her love affair with the second wife of the founder of that company. It was really through this fascination with these modernist figures [like Pound] who determine so much about what we value in art and literature, but were in so many ways, pretty awful human beings.
Do you have any advice or words of encouragement for those who want to go into writing, publishing, or a creative field?
If you have that longing to make art or write, and you stifle it because it’s not going to be lucrative for you now, you won’t be able to make a living at it. I think that isn’t good for your mental health. Try not to put pressure on yourself to make a lot of money doing that, but recognize that if you’re talented with words and with language, there are all kinds of places that need good communicators.
If working with words and language that isn’t your own work drains you and doesn’t leave you room for what you want to produce, then think about a different line of work. Open yourself to other skills that won’t drain your emotional and creative self. Don’t think that no one wants to hear from you because you don’t know anything, or you haven’t done anything. Recognize that most people love to talk about themselves and their work, so they will likely want to talk to you. You shouldn’t overlook the smaller things, and you also shouldn’t doubt your capacity to connect with people or their willingness to talk to you.
You can purchase “The Dime Museum” at Barnes and Noble or at your local bookstore. Hinnefeld will be holding an author event on Sunday, Sept. 28, at the Easton/Bethlehem Barnes and Noble (in Southmont Plaza, off Route 33).
