I was elated to get to interview Elana K. Arnold for The Nerd Daily! I’ve had the opportunity to review Damsel in 2018 and her now her latest book, Red Hood. They’re both these fierce stories about female empowerment, and while these are definitely more intense than other YA novels I’ve read…they make you think about a lot of things. Elana K. Arnold is great at getting the reader to truly look into themselves and realise they’re stronger than they realise.
Red Hood is a powerful story about a young woman who defeats a wolf that is hunting her down, but begins to wonder what might be happening when a boy turns up dead in the same woods that the wolf attacked her in. I encourage everyone to pick up this beautiful book, especially young women. The book does deal with trauma, death, assault, and some other dark themes, but I beseech you to read it if you can.
Hi Elana! Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your upcoming novel, Red Hood, which publishes on February 25th?
Thank you so much for your careful reading and reviews. I’m delighted you feel a connection to my work.
I write books for and about children and teens—YA novels to picture books and everything in between. I love all animals, including humans, and I see my work in the YA space as exploring that which fascinates, compels, beguiles, disgusts, and enrages me.
I first had the idea for the story that would become Red Hood three winters ago. I was near Yosemite, ice skating in a rink ringed with trees. A full moon was overhead. And, I’d just begun my period. It occurred to me that werewolves cycle with the moon, and menstruators cycle with the moon. Wouldn’t it make wonderful sense if there were a girl who, when she began her cycle, found that with the blood came certain… abilities? I had to write it.
Was the process of creating your main character in Red Hood, Bisou Martel, the same as Ama’s in Damsel? What were these experiences like?
Each book is a singular creation. Because Red Hood is written in the second person perspective—“you”—and the present tense, writing was a visceral, almost raw experience. Damsel is told in third person. Though the story is also intense, there was a feeling like a cushion of snow, painful but numbing, between the events and myself.
There are some murders being investigated in story, and while this is a work of fiction, were they based on any real events?
Everything I write is based on what I see around me and inside of me. I worked on drafts of Red Hood as sexual assaulters Brock Turner, Jeffrey Epstein, Brett Kavanaugh, and others flashed through the news cycle. Their smug faces. Their belligerence.
And the bravery of the women who confronted them—Chanel Miller. Courtney Wild. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
My own lived experiences.
I write fiction, which means that my job is to pay attention, consume, digest, and then create.
What kind of research did you do when you started writing Red Hood?
I did tons of interesting research for this book. To begin with, I read every version of Little Red Riding Hood I could find, as well as analyses of them; I investigated synthetic cathinones, commonly known as bath salts; I learned about crime scenes; I figured out how thick ice on a pond might be in an early Quebec spring. I charted menstrual cycles against moon cycles. I learned about the Blood Moon. And so much more.
There are some parallels between Bisou and her grandmother’s story. Can you tell us why you decided on telling the story this way?
This was an element of the story that really made its own determination about how to be told. Some parts of a book come by work and research and deep thoughts; others spring fully formed, like Athena from Zeus’s head. This decision falls in the latter category.
If Bisou had a music playlist, what would be on it?
“Angel” (Massive Attack)
“Silent Shout” (The Knife)
“Twice” (Little Dragon)
“Wolf Like Me” (TV On The Radio)
“In for the Kill” (Skream’s Let’s Get Ravey Remix)
“February 3rd” (Jorja Smith)
“Heartbeats” (José González)
“Wolf Among Wolves” (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy)
“Yes I’m Changing” (Tame Impala)
“Werewolf” (Cat Power)
“Replica” (The xx)
I think these songs, in this order, beautifully capture so much about Bisou Martel and Red Hood.
What would Ama think of the choices that Bisou and her grandmother made in Red Hood?
I think a lot about Ama and the Kingdom of Harding. Usually, once I’ve finished a book, I leave the characters. It’s like a trance is broken. But Ama stays with me, and I find myself wondering—what would she be doing, now? What’s going on in the kingdom, now? Who is wielding power, and to what effect?
So many things come down to power. Who has it. Who doesn’t. Who wants it, and what they are willing to do to take it. And taking power isn’t always a bad thing, right? I mean, it’s not great to claim absolute power, raping and killing on your way to the top. But if you are a person whose power has ever been stolen, then you, like Ama, would understand the particular satisfaction of taking it back.
Who has been your favorite character to write among the books you’ve published?
I love all my protagonists. I think Nina, from What Girls Are Made Of, is the most closely related to who I was at sixteen or seventeen. She is so full of shame and fear, and she is so confused, yet she feels compelled to create, to do something with all those big, messy feelings.
You tell stories that are not gentle. They’re quite visceral, raw, and real. Can you talk about why it’s important not to always be gentle in our storytelling?
I think each artist is compelled to do something with the materials in front of them and inside them. The things that have filled me up have not always been gentle, so when I pull from these sources, the art I create reflects that truth.
That said, we all contain multitudes. Many of my lived experiences and relationships have been gentle, life affirming, wonderful. These find their way into my work as well—often in my books for younger readers, and, in the case of Red Hood, in many of the relationships that Bisou explores.
If you are an artist, I encourage you to embrace the full spectrum of your experiences, your history, your environment. Inspiration is everywhere, and all of us have stories, both great and terrible, that deserve to be told.
What is your message for young women who might be facing some wolves of their own in real life?
This was one of my main struggles with this book. So many young people do and will face wolves in their real lives. Very few of us will find that with our menstrual cycle comes the ability to hunt them down. So, what are the rest of us supposed to do?
I hope Red Hood does a good job of answering this question. I think it does. I hope readers will, too.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for us?
If you’re looking for more fairy tale reinterpretations, pick up Anna-Marie McLemore’s Dark and Deepest Red, Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels, and the short story collection My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, edited by Kate Bernheimer and Carmen Giménez Smith.
Elana K Arnold is the author of many books for and about children and teens, including Printz Honor winner DAMSEL, National Book Award finalist and Golden Kite winner WHAT GIRLS ARE MADE OF, and Global Read Aloud selection A BOY CALLED BAT and its sequels. Many of her books are Junior Library Guild selections and have appeared on best book lists, including the Amelia Bloomer Project, a catalog of feminist titles for young readers. Elana teaches in Hamline University’s MFA in writing for children and young adults program, and lives in Southern California with her family and menagerie of pets. You can find her online at elanakarnold.com and on Twitter and Instagram.
