A conversation with the writer Lauren Hough

"What's interesting I think is I've always been this person, with this voice, and the way people react to me when I speak has never changed. They either love it or they goddamn want me to shut up."

“Defies categorisation” has become its own stupidly vague category of late, which renders the term a meaningless at best and at worst an inexcusable cliche. AND YET every once in a while I stumble across a writer who truly refuses to be slotted, whose work, subject, style, voice, turn-of-phrase, punctuation, whatever — tickles me under the chin then right-hooks me sideways leaving me speechless in the gutter, concussed for days. And when that happens, I stagger to my feet, heart-soaring and do a little drunken Irish jig down the road. Because it reminds me that true originality is still alive and well in a world where so much of what’s out there often feels formulaic, derivative or just flat out dull.

Lauren Hough is flat out, but dull she is not. She’s one of those rare writers whose background and work are difficult to describe without sounding like a deranged fabulist but allow me to try. Oooohkey, so here to start? According to the bio on her author site, “Lauren is a New York Times Best Selling author and essayist. She was born in Berlin, Germany, and raised in seven countries, and Amarillo, Texas. She’s been an Air Force Airman, a green-aproned barista, a bouncer, a bartender, and, for a time, a cable guy.”

Fair enough, but that leaves out the not insignificant fact that she’s a six-foot-tall lesbian dog-owner who lives in Austin, Texas, has won a bunch of literary awards and can single-handedly (sort of) fix up a dodgy old van. Also the minor detail that she was raised in a religious abuse and sex cult, the Children of God, that trafficked Hough and countless other blameless child ‘members’ across the globe, robbing her of an education, a name, sense of self, yet somehow, inexplicably, leaving her immense writing talent in tact. Also back in the 90s she was court-marshalled by the US military who accused her of fire-bombing her own car for the insurance money during the 'don’t-ask-don’t-tell’ era. Plus she’s a die hard Dixie Chicks fan and in addition to her brilliant memoir, a hilarious (if agonised and ambivalent) Tweeter as well as the author of Bad Reads a compulsive and hilarious Substack that’s about, well, whatever weird random shit is on her mind.

Listen to me now: You just have to read it.

And the same goes for my Q & A with her below. I’ve honestly never really done an interview quite like it. Because I’m newly obsessed by her work, I asked her a series of in-depth, overly-intense, at times tangential questions figuring she’d either dismiss me out of hand, answer in monosyllables or maybe just maybe join me on the same weird overly-intense tangential plane. And bless her, she clambered up! If this is the first you’ve heard of Lauren Hough, all I can say is YOU ARE WELCOME.

If you enjoy the interview — and obviously you will — please do me a solid and subscribe. There’s a cost of living crisis and I’m broke. So broke this week I panicked and applied to be the sex and relationships writer for Cosmopolitan UK and I didn’t even get a call back… the cheek!

LM: Lauren. I was trying to think how I came across you and your work and the weird thing is I don’t actually know. I just sort of became aware of you somehow. In a weird way your writing felt like a secret discovery for me and I think this ‘becoming aware’ thing was/is part of it. I *like* that no one recommended your book to me at a dinner party. And yes I know it was probably fed to me by an algorithm (without me knowing it) but the point is I bought it and read it and loved it and it felt a bit like an LP I found at the bottom of a pile in a used record store in 1986. Do you get this a lot? People feeling like they’ve ‘discovered’ you? Or is it just me?

LH: I never know what to think about this--how often people tell me they just sort of became aware of me and picked up the book. I've settled on, it's probably one of the better ways for people to feel about your book. My favorite things--music or art or books always felt like my own little discovery. I wouldn't know how I found them, how I first heard a song or what made me buy the CD or book. It was like that with Patty Griffin in the 90s. No idea how I found her. Certainly didn't hear her on the radio. Didn't tell my friends to listen to her. If I had, they wouldn't have gotten it. She was my secret thing. And to this day, I'm always a little surprised when I see someone else talking about her. It's a moment of wait, other people know about her?? Are we best friends? And she's still not from the radio. Maybe it's the genx-er thing. But I like feeling a little underground. I don't know that I have a choice in that. honestly. I may have a major publisher, but I hope I wrote a weird enough book that people are afraid to recommend it to their normie friends who definitely won't get it.

LM: I am also a devoted reader and paid subscriber to your Substack (worth every penny, I might add), and apart from the fact you’re just very good at your craft and have brilliant, hilarious, blisteringly acute insights into life, writing, class, identity etc. I think the reason I always open and read your posts is because I just want to. And I want to because you seem plausible to me. What I mean is that I absolutely believe you mean what you’re saying (whether I agree or not is totally irrelevant). Something about your voice on the page is fully present – like you’re sitting across from me, banging my kitchen table, trying to convey your point! It’s an extraordinary, connective quality – being able to channel that kind of authorial presence and urgency, but it’s also slightly unnerving to me as a reader because I feel a bit like you’re grabbing me by the lapels and saying ‘Sit down. LISTEN.’ Anyway, it’s working for you – and your many devoted readers. But what I’m wondering is how did you come by it, this urgent authorial  ‘voice’? Is it your ‘real’ voice – like the same one you use to talk and tell stories with in real life? Or is your writing ‘voice’ its own thing entirely? 

LH: It's my natural voice, god help me. What's interesting I think is I've always been this person, with this voice, and the way people react to me when I speak has never changed. They either love it or at least respect it, or goddamn they want me to shut up. I saw that when I was going through copy edits. My mom was retiring and moving to Florida. And she'd given me these boxes I'd left in her basement years ago. One of those boxes was the entire record of my court martial in the Air Force, all the trial documents and the investigator notes. I'd read through these interviews the Air Force investigators did with coworkers and other airmen on base. And it's all the same shit they say about me now. "Airman Hough is abrasive." "People just don't like Airman Hough because she humiliated Airman ---, who's this huge bully. He's the one we should be talking about." "Airman Hough is a bully." "Airman Hough is actually really nice." "Obviously they torched her car because she's gay." "Airman Hough is a lying asshole." "Airman Hough doesn't lie. They don't like her because she's gay and says shit they don't like." There's never been an in-between with me. It's a very visceral reaction, and what makes twitter such a minefield. Anytime a thing I say is overheard outside my intended audience, whether that's an adult in the next room, the customer standing next my friend at the bar, or the wrong circle online, someone's going to take a swing at me. They're compelled to shut me up. I don't entirely understand it. But it's not exactly a surprise. From the time we're very young, women are trained to soften our tone or pay the price. I just, didn't fucking learn. I tried. I wasted a lot of time muting myself and writing what I thought people would want to read. It never worked because it wasn't real. Then I wrote the cable guy essay. I didn't think anyone would read it. But I needed the money to pay a vet bill for my dog. I wrote most of it while at work at a bar, didn't have time to worry about who might read it or who I might piss off. So I let it happen; I wrote like I talk, from the part of my brain that never shuts up, and, by virtue of exhaustion or not caring at all who'd read it, I found the voice that works.

LM: Much of your writing, both in your memoir and here on Substack, feels to me like you are talking to someone in particular… someone I shall modestly assume is not me, because we’ve obviously never met. I’m not sure if it feels this way to you as the writer? I suppose I’m asking this question because my own memoir, which is mostly about my relationship with my mother, was very much written with her in mind as a reader (yes, she’s still alive and no, not she’s not talking to me, thanks for asking). And while it’s not addressed to her, there are passages in which I address the reader, but in my own mind the reader was always specifically her. Now, this may be an unanswerable question, but what I want to know is who (if anyone) are you addressing in your work? Or, to get a bit meta, are you in fact addressing an aspect of yourself? Who do you imagine on the other side of the table? Who are you grabbing by the imaginary lapels (if anyone)? 

LH: I can't really say who I'm talking to. I generally don't imagine anyone reading what I write or I wouldn't be able to write a word of truth. Maybe it's everyone and no one. Someone who didn't listen or didn't think I should speak. Someone to whom I was afraid to tell the truth. Someone who wants to tell the truth but doesn't have the words. There's a narrative in my head that's only quieted if I write it down. I don't know who I'm talking to. I generally don't know what I'm trying to say until I've said it. I'm not writing because I know what I think. I'm writing because I'm trying to figure out what I think, because I'm trying to understand something. I think what comes across as urgency is often just my excitement at finding a little clarity within my mess of a mind. While I can't imagine anyone reading, I'm just hoping someone hears me. I think that's why we write anything at all.

LM: Your memoir Leaving Isn’t The Hardest Thing is in fact a collection of essays – and since its publication I’ve read a number of similar memoir/essay collection hybrids and become mildly obsessed with the form, to the extent that it even qualifies as one. The reason I think it works so well with your book in particular is that it allows you to tell your wildly unconventional life story – Christian sex cult to court marshalling to club bouncer to cable guy, in a nutshell – without being a slave to chronology, so rather than feeling like a surreal ramble, the book works more like a series of arresting flashbacks in which the reader is able to slowly puzzle out the extraordinary story of who you are and how you came to be – as is slowly sketching in a ‘face’ to match the ‘voice.’ I’m curious to know,  how do you feel about the essay-memoir form? How did it work/not work for you as an author? Would you use it again (I understand you have another book in the works)? Also, what are your feelings about narrative chronology or lack thereof. How do you decide what to reveal when? For instance, in your book you could have started in the obvious place – the cult – but instead you open with the court-marshalling – why specifically there?

LH: It never hurts to start with an explosion. That was the entirety of the thinking there. But the court martial was a good place to fold in some of the back story. That was the most difficult part of it, telling what a reader needed to know to understand what was going on without sounding like a wikipedia entry. So I'd layer in the basics at first--this is a cult. Later, when I started talking about my own sexuality, I dropped in some of the cult's more fucked up beliefs and so on. I wanted the backstory to build on itself. But the only way to do that was to let it build organically. I actually tried to sell a traditional memoir, twice actually. The first didn't sell at all. It felt like the end of the world. But I'm grateful now. That wasn't the book I wanted to write. Then the cable guy essay blew up and I had some options. If you're really lucky and more than one editor wants your book, you get to talk to them about what kind of book they want you to write. When I talked to Tim O'Connell at Knopf, he talked me into doing essays. I signed with him because he made it sound fun, and I was an idiot and thought essays would be easier. But the form allowed me to talk about what I wanted, and leave out the rest. I never wanted to write a cult tell-all. I thought I'd have to. But with essays I could connect all these seemingly disparate points of my life to say what I wanted to say. It's like those interview questions--tell me about a time you showed leadership. So you have all these anecdotes from your life. I maybe have a few more than most, but I didn't want to write them all. Our minds connect experiences, whether we realize it or not, and we seldom see it in the moment. I don't write with my conscious mind. But I'd start writing a story about working at a bar, and I'd think, damn, why was I so weird about being given free bagels? Oh. Yeah so it turns out when you live off hand-outs, there's a lot of shame attached to that. This is probably what you're supposed to do in therapy, but I'm more honest on the page. Essays allowed me the freedom to switch back and dig into the why and expand on it until I got to the truth. Some things, like a giraffe out in the middle of nowhere, Texas, I knew I had to use. Tim and I kept talking about that goddamn giraffe. You can't be handed a metaphor like that and leave it out. But we didn't know what to do with it. Then I got to that last essay. I was days away from my deadline, and I realize now it wouldn't have mattered if I were a couple days late. But Tim helpfully didn't mention that. I needed the deadline. Sometimes, often, I'm better when I don't have time to overthink something and I just have to sit down and see what comes out. But all I was thinking at the time, and all I told Tim was that I found a place for that fucking giraffe. I don't know if he trusted me or thought I'd lost my damn mind, but I like to think he was as excited as I was.

LM: You do a lot of Twitter and you’re good at Twitter. But Twitter also pisses you off and causes you pain, which I know because you are open about your experience of Twitter on Twitter. I used to do more Twitter but was burnt a couple of times and now I’m a pretty shy Tweeter because the platform feels like the scene of a crime where something very bad happened to me (also even before The Shaming I wasn’t very good at it). So apart from the fact that we’re all dopamine seekers in search of public validation, why do you go back to Twitter even after it fucks you off? (I’m really not asking this in a judgemental way, I’m genuinely just curious). Obviously the negative effects of Twitter on it’s users have been much-discussed but what are the positive aspects, if any? Nosey aside: are you able to make money off it in any way (apart from expanding your platform, which obviously isn’t nothing)? As you can probably tell, despite being on it for over a decade, I still don’t fully get Twitter. What do you know that I don’t?

LH: I think sometimes I go back just to remind myself they can't actually hurt me. Sometimes I go back to remind them they can't kill me. When you grow up like I did, rejected and hurt by those who were supposed to love and protect you, it tweaks your brain a little. Some part of you truly believes every fight is a fight for your own survival. Twitter can make it feel like the whole world is coming down on you. Doesn't help that it's for the same shit it's always been--something I said or the way I said it. And it fucking hurts. But I didn't back down and conform when I was a kid. I'm sure as fuck not doing it now. They think it matters, a follower count or being liked, because it's all they have. But twitter doesn't mean anything unless you're on twitter. Most readers aren't. Try to explain something on twitter to people who are not on twitter and you can watch them tune you out and start thinking about soup recipes, as they should. I used twitter to break into writing--make friends with writers, promote shit I'd written. But I didn't want to be famous on twitter. It doesn't mean anything. I'm too old to think anything online is real. My brain just doesn't work that way. Most of my writing career doesn't feel real because it's mostly happened online. The book feels real, sort of. But it came out in a pandemic. Most of my book tour was zoom meetings which are not real. Tune in at 7 to watch Lauren Hough cry. The only piece I've got framed on my wall is something I wrote for Texas Highways. Texas Highways is a real magazine. I know it's real because my grandma always had Texas Highways on her coffee table. If I ever get a piece in National Geographic, I'll know I've made it. I wanted to be a writer and have a voice and be heard. So I got on twitter because that's where writers were hanging out. I've already got what I wanted. I'm a writer and I've got friends who are real writers. They, some anonymous cartoons on twitter can't take that away. The financial side of it, who knows. I refuse to believe it sells books. I've got something like 100k followers. I promise you I haven't sold that many books. I'll use it to promote the substack, and I'll use the substack to promote the next book or anything else I want to promote.

LM: How’s the van? Passed the road test yet?

LH: That goddamn van. We're not on speaking terms right now. You know those days when you side-eye your laptop, call it some names under your breath but never open it? That's where we are right now. I'm gonna try to sneak up on it in the morning.

LM: You’ve written a few posts lately on here (Substack) about writing/publishing and a lot of it’s stuff I felt like I knew but hadn’t put into words, or at least had not seen  articulated on the page so brazenly. Stuff like the weird agony of having to ask authors you admire for blurbs (literal hell) and then the conflicted joy of getting a good one after you’ve spent months and months stealing yourself against giving a shit what anyone thinks of your work – writer survivalism 101. You’ve also written about the pressures and weirdness of outlines and promotion and the exposure of needing to do social work in order to market your book when you’re mostly an introvert by nature and the surreal reality of being your own “brand,” even perhaps especially if that brand is really just you (and/or your dog). I really enjoy reading it because it’s the stuff that all writers talk about endlessly amongst ourselves but don’t express publicly because if you actually have a career as a writer, there’s this feeling you really shouldn’t talk shop or moan about it except in a ‘here’s how to become as successful as me’ workshop-robot tone. And I think this is because as writers we are constantly reminded how incredibly lucky we are to be paid for our work at all. And while it’s good to be grateful, the way you write about this stuff is very heartening to me because what you’re saying, in essence, is that even when you have a viable career, it’s still really, really hard. There are still corporate/capitalist interests at play, and ultimately it’s still all on YOU at the end of the day. If your shit doesn’t sell, it’s your problem, no one else’s. So anyway, I’m wondering whether you’ve had any blow back from your paymasters (or anyone else) because of how brutally honest you are in your shop talk? Also how do you feel about the whole Substack thing vs. conventional publishing? Is there a cost benefit there? Please elaborate.

LH: There are rules in any industry about what you don't talk about. Don't talk about salary. Don't talk about what was said in the meeting. Don't talk about rates. The rules only serve to keep people out and stop any of us from asking for more. When I was trying to break into writing, it was nearly impossible to find the most basic information--things like how to get an agent--without paying for a class or a webinar. Seemed like the pathway was lined with traps and scams. There are a thousand vultures who will take your money for every one who'll help. You shouldn't have to know someone who knows someone to find the path. So I try to talk about it all. Maybe it helps someone. Pisses a lot of people off too. They don't like people like me sneaking into the party, telling people you don't have to buy a ticket. I get blowback but they never come at me head on. They'll try to snipe me during a pile-on or a weird rumor will start going around or I don't get invited to certain events. It's never so obvious as someone telling me to stop talking about pay or workshop grifts. But it's not subtle. I can be on Fresh Air and have a bestseller, but I am constantly reminded that I do not belong at the party. I don't look at Substack as an alternative to traditional publishing. I'm hoping having this unfiltered, more direct outlet to readers will help sell another book. But financially, it took a lot of the pressure off having to do the freelance hustle or sell something I didn't want to write.

LM: The story of your experience in the military, the xenophobia you experienced and the insanity of your court-marshalling during the whole don’t-ask-don’t-tell era served as a stark reminder of how radically and quickly the conversation (as well as the laws) around gay rights rapidly evolved, especially compared to other civil rights battles in modern history, for instance women’s suffrage and US racial segregation borne of slavery, both of which took over a century and saw countless lives sacrificed to get to the place where there was decisive action in the courts. While obviously there’s still loads xenophobia out there (and all the attendant evil isms), your court marshalling experience now seems like something from a bygone era rather than something that happened in the late 90s. Do you ever marvel at that? And if so, how do you think this acceleration (real or perceived) of “social progress” has shaken down in other ways, say for instance on the trans vs. gender critical feminist debate (which in my view is less about the oppression of one special interest group vs. another but two interest groups with intersecting rights). Do you see a continuum between the two issues (for instance in the translobby’s co-opting of Stonewall)? In essence, what are your thoughts?

LH: It seems like another lifetime. But then, I live in Texas. I can drive 30 miles outside the city limits and it doesn't seem like anything's changed. We spend a lot of time attacking one another while actual fascism is on the rise. And it's a huge problem in the LGBT community. In any movement or community within that movement, there are always people who will spend more time and effort attacking their own community than they'll ever spend doing anything that materially benefits the community. There's a financial interest in sowing discord. Twitter runs on rage and controversy; rage feeds engagement. So you end up with people who just want engagement or simply don't fucking like someone, and they'll co-opt the language to harass and slander allies and people within their own community. They're not interested in fixing anything or building a movement. They're just stirring shit and fighting over who's more oppressed. It's incredibly manipulative. Then there are those who see the financial opportunity. They call themselves activists but all they do is tweet. The more they generate rage, the more they generate engagement. Then they post their gofundme. Donate here to support my work. These types have been around as long as there have been movements for social change. But it's a lot easier with social media. I don't think most of us are all that far apart on what we believe. But saying that doesn't generate engagement. Unless you quote-tweet it with "Lauren Hough says we agree with Nazis." And now no one has to do any work that might actually help anyone at all.

LM: You grew up all over the world in communes run by the Children of God cult, one of the biggest, weirdest, international sex-and-mind-control Christian cults to grow out of the 70s and 80s post-hippy Jim Jones weirdscape. Firstly, why do you think there were so many cults around at that time (particularly in America) and secondly, do you hold with the common view that cults are on the rise again (which assumes, perhaps wrongly, even they went away in the first place), and if so what form are they taking now in your view? Can cults be digital as well as literal and physical in your view? How does the rise of  misinformation, social unease, income inequality, the general bin fire of the world play into a cultist mentality? (I know you’re not a cult expert, just asking for a general view.)

LH: I think we're at a point where the word "cult" has lost any useful meaning. Everything's a cult. So nothing's a cult. When we feel lost, adrift, when we feel like our lives have no meaning, we're susceptible to those who'll tell us to join them, and through them find meaning and purpose. In times of social upheaval, the 60s and now, cults start forming all around us. It's how we're wired. When we're scared of the wooly mammoths, we know we're safer in a group. The group can be as small as a marriage or a company, or as large as a country. Mostly, it's fine. It's good to be part of a community. But if the community tries to isolate you, convince you everyone else is the enemy and you're the only ones who know the truth, it's time to go.

LM: Is it really true that no one you ever later dated (prior to writing your memoir I mean) bothered to even research the cult? For some reason that detail stuck with me. It bugged me and still bugs me, probably because I’m a codependent journalist by personality type/training and as a result have copiously researched anyone who’s ever bothered to make me a sandwich, and for a long time because of that I’d just always just sort of assumed everyone else did too, except that obviously… they don’t, and it’s disappointing. So I empathise. Anyway, now that I’ve written a memoir, it’s interesting to me the people in my life who don’t read it, won’t read it, are scared to read it or, weirdest of all, aren’t remotely interested in reading it – even though I know for sure they’re interested in me. Like my ten-year-old son: zero interest. I mean probably it’s healthy (proof he’s not a codependent weirdo like me, yay parenting win!), but in adult friends and loved ones, this incuriosity just seems anathema to me. It’s kind of like refusing to find out the sex of your unborn baby at the ultrasound test, I mean, so many people choose not to know but why would you do that? It’s interesting information and it’s available… why refuse? I don’t get it. So I’m curious to ask YOU, as a fellow memoirist (with a much more fascinating and harrowing life story than my own), since your book has come out, how many of your nearest and dearest have or have not read it? Why or why not? And how do you feel about the ones who don’t?

LH: It's funny I spent a lot of time worrying about who'd read it, which uncomfortable conversations I'd need to have. I made a redacted copy for my dad, glued post-it notes over sections I didn't want him reading. But for the most part, among close friends and family, I don't think we've discussed it beyond things like, "Hey I read your book. I liked it." None of it was a surprise I suppose. I'm sure there are those who haven't read it, but I don't read all of my friends' books. And it's the last thing I want to talk about. I haven't really figured out how to navigate dating with it out there. It's a lot of information to have on someone. Writers get it. That I'm no longer the person in the book, or it's not all I am. I'm the person who wrote the book. But dating has been... let's go with interesting.

LM: Should I get a rescue dog? Please don’t ask about my circumstances, just say yes or no. (Also how’s Woody?)

LH: Woody's the fucking best. But dogs are a terrible idea. They'll ruin your goddamn life. You can't travel on a whim. You have to come home. They'll destroy something you love, more than once. But if you get to a point where you cannot go another day without getting a dog, and it happens to the best of us, get the dog you fall in love with.

LM: It’s Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend and my Aunt Bev and Uncle Bill are visiting from Houston. I’m not there (I live in London) but I wish I was, because I miss them and love them so much. They are the warmest, most decent, honest, kind people. Catholic but not in a pushy way. Bev’s a retired nurse and Bill is an airman who later worked at NASA. They’re good people and I’ve known them all my life, but the thing is, politically speaking, they are true blue believers. My family are moderate Canadian WASPs so we go by the rule of ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all,’ which is fine for Thanksgiving weekend but not realistic in the long run, for a family or a country, as America well knows (and Canada is beginning to find out). I’m telling you this because I think of you as someone who’s unusual life experience spans the yawning divide of modern America (in terms of class, religion, culture and politics), plus you live in Austin, which is kind of Texas, right? So many of us have an Aunt Bev and Uncle Bill in our lives – they might be our parents or our siblings or our cousins or our colleague i.e. people who you know are good people, whom you love, but with whom you violently disagree. How do we get along and truly connect without concealing our true selves and suppressing our values and beliefs? You're asking the wrong person. I'm not good at keeping my mouth shut and I think it's good for people to have their beliefs challenged. If arguing changed anyone's mind, there would be a point to staying on twitter. But I think we do ourselves a disservice with cutting off those who don't think like we do. I think it's our responsibility to talk to our relatives. We all tend to surround ourselves with people who share our basic values, as we should. And then there's family. If we don't talk to them, who will. And maybe you don't change their minds. When I was a kid, the only time I heard a different viewpoint from the extremely fucked up version of Christianity, the homophobia and bigotry of the cult, was when we visited relatives. Maybe it didn't sway my parents, or not soon enough. But I was listening. And it mattered.